It's bothered me for years. Where did the ridiculous notion

[Hortensis]

25. This "rural/small town" meme is WHITE and CHRISTIAN,

which cities are not. (Rural POC don't fit this picture of course. Has there been a minority TV show set in a rural area, where so many do live?)

So one guess where the idea of its moral and cultural superiority came from and who cling to it today: white Christian conservatives, rural and urban, who distrust and are uncomfortable with nontribal influences and find comfort in it. Insularity's a human condition, after all. Everyone feels their own peoples and villages are somehow better than others.

TV and radio arrived and sought profits by playing to white Christian consumers, who were overwhelmingly the largest and most affluent market.

The same for increasingly sophisticated conservative political manipulators, who've proved again and again willing to destroy to win power and, totally predictably in hindsight, ramped natural tribal protectiveness up to toxic levels in order to divide and conquer.

Btw, note that they're failing. Like ISIS, they had a long run with lots of victories between 1980 and today, and there are pockets where they're still entrenched, but Obama and the midterms show a continuing trend of failure for lack of support from most Americans. After all, even in rural areas people get Modern Family and Blackish, and most have no desire to escape their pernicious influences or longing into Ozzie and Harriet reruns.