[gibbitz]

I took this to be more about Alabama having 1/30th the population and a similar number of patents. The Soviet Union was 1/6th of the Earth and Alabama is less than 1/100th the size. If rural bias were to be involved in the choice here it would be to suggest that what those with the bias think of as underpopulated or backwater is more vibrant populus and intelligent than the largest part of the country formerly known as the country vilified as super scientists during the cold war.

To your point, Alabama was chosen to make that point because the numbers are contrary to that stereotype. The stereotype is not fair (they rarely are). But there's another way to look at this.

All of the American South was delt a hard blow in the Civil War and rebuilding afterwards as well as the subsequent industrialization and the fall of cotton, the dustbowl and then the fall of manufacturing has been hard on that region as well. Russia emerged from the end of the Cold War having faced a similar war of attrition but for them this started not long after the end of their own Civil War and a World War. In the same period of time those people met many more hardships but to come out into capitalism only to have oligarchs steal the country's wealth and resources puts them far behind even what Americans could see as an unfortunate part of our own country with similar hardships.

[watwut]

> All of the American South was delt a hard blow in the Civil War

I mean, that is one way to describe the end of slavery. Surely we can say rather large subset got better off despite repeated violent attempts to prevent improvement in their lives.

[ltbarcly3]

Of course it's better to be poor, uneducated, and free than it is to be poor, uneducated, and a slave. It's not even comparable. However, it's better still to have access to education and economic opportunity. Laughing at the south for being poor and uneducated is literally laughing at the descendants of slaves for being uneducated and poor.

Glib comments about 'the end of slavery' miss the point completely. The south isn't the great great grandchildren of plantation owners complaining about being poor and suffering the consequences of the Civil War. Those people are doing quite well, look at how good the schools are in the rich, almost entirely white suburbs of Jackson, Mississippi - a city where you can't drink the tap water.