[inglor_cz]

It is also possible that people in rural areas tend to have less contact with the government in general - after all, most government activity takes place in the capital and other big cities.

And in absence of contact, people do not really have strong opinions. But once information arrives, things change.

Prior to mass media, few Americans would be strongly opinionated on the internal dealings of Washington D.C. Simply said, they never set their foot there and the distant federal government was not a major influence in their lives.

With the contemporary news cycle, Washington D.C. feels very close and familiar, even to me, a Czech residing an ocean away from it.

[Broken_Hippo]

I don't know. Rural areas have farms, and there are plenty of government regulations about farming - and your money is tied to these. Government is less convenient too: Just a trip to the DMV or courthouse might take 30-60 minutes of driving.

I think the parent was correct: Cities tend to have more diverse populations. Rural areas tend to have less, which means less folks to challenge your notions of the world (and more chance that you'll write some of the folks off that do so).

[C1sc0cat]

And pretty much all developed nations have subsidy programs for farmers who are a well organised political bloc.

[082349872349872]

Farmers can also signal honestly when demonstrating. Hoodies and backpacks may be cheap, but it's much less likely anyone would acquire a whole tractor even if they wished to discredit a farmers' protest.

[TeMPOraL]

And let's not forget religion, which has much larger influence on rural populations than it has on urban ones.

As an example, in Poland, it's widely observed that rural regions are much more supportive of the current ruling party than the urban ones; this is attributed in part to the good relationship between our ruling party and the Catholic Church in Poland.

[pnw_hazor]

In rural areas people often have more and closer contact with government than big city folks.

People in US rural areas are likely to personally interact with the mayor, sheriff, police chief, council members, US park service directors, US forest service directors, local or federal agriculture agency reps, public utility commissioners, water commissioners, tribal government, and so on.

And, many of these people do have direct influence on their day to day life.

[FpUser]

>"With the contemporary news cycle, Washington D.C. feels very close and familiar, even to me, a Czech residing an ocean away from it."

Problem with this is that modern reporting is so f..d up that the picture they paint often has little to do with reality. Instead of trying to adequately address the reality media is trying create one and / or doing plain propaganda.