Thanks for responding to my post.
People forget how rural New York is once you get out of NYC. Having lived many years in Virginia and North Carolina, I think the accents may be different, but folks in rural New York are much like Southerners in that they still value faith, family, and public civility.
I guess the lesson here is that the divide in this country is rural vs. urban. Perhaps some day the cities will get a harsh lesson in what it means to go without the bounty of our farmlands.
Very true. I've lived in Michigan, Virginia, Texas and Pennsylvania in my adult life, and now have property in upstate NY. There are deep divisions and they are more urban vs rural than many urban people realize. They make assumptions about education levels that are incorrect. There are many educated and intelligent people in the rural areas who are quite angry. I live in a swing county in PA. There is a lot of virtue signalling blindness among my neighbors. They have no idea of the cold anger that exists among their neighbors.