> rural folks are less educated and therefore more susceptible to forces that are predatory to those who do not make a practice of critical thinking > I don't

> rural folks are less educated and therefore more susceptible to forces that are predatory to those who do not make a practice of critical thinking > I don't think it's controversial to say that education liberalizes Highly-educated city folks make totally preposterous claims with zero critical thinking all the time. So you're right that education tends to liberalize, but wrong that education somehow makes people engage in more critical thinking. I posit that for every piece of garbage that comes out of Fox News, there's an equal and opposite piece of garbage coming out of MSNBC.