Your "Corporal Bubba" isn't just cynical, it leans heavily upon a harmful stereotype that folks in small towns are uneducated simpletons. Stop the polarization, please
Why wouldn't they be? I went to university with people from all over Russia. They don't tend to return to their home towns after getting educated. Does this work differently in America?
Sadly, when you consider the available evidence, Corporal Bubba isn’t too far from the truth. I say that as someone whose Dad is a retired police officer and who spent most of his youth in a very small town with sub-1200 people.
Rural areas are subject to brain drain where the best and the brightest disproportionately leave for more urban settings where more money is available to be earned. Living in a rural setting is something one chooses not an immutable fact like skin color and by and large the harmful stereotype is spot on.