I think it's more of an identity politics thing, and the elephant in the room (pun intended) is the degree to which one political party uses both rural identity

I think it's more of an identity politics thing, and the elephant in the room (pun intended) is the degree to which one political party uses both rural identity and anti-intellectualism as a form of populist virtue signaling, and pushes the narrative of an intractible "cold civil war" brewing between "city dwellers" and "rural folk." In reality of course culture is by and large manufactured by corporations and normalized by social media, such that anti-intellectualism and "rural identity" depend far more on the bubbles of hyperreality one inhabits than one's physical location, wealth or educational level.