In the magazine, he claims:
" You won't find much crusader zeal in Franklin County.
For one thing, people in small towns don't want to offend people whom they'll be encountering on the streets for the next fifty years. Potentialy controversial subjects are often played down. ---- snip ------ It would be simply uncivil to thrust raw disagreement in peoples faces."
I've seen this meself, as I grew up in a small town.
So maybe FR's uncivility is just due to its anonomous nature?
Gloria Steinem, Woody Allen, Geralso Rivera, and many others wouldn't survive in red America. Blue America has an extensive parasitic fop subculture that supports them in ease and stupidity. That's where they congregate and vote. Capacity to produce outrage is a major industry in such places that has been taken up by the social structure. A fool can survive in the red area by virtue of attention and entertainment value. On a farm, it will get you broke and hungry within a short time.
As far as civility, I call them as I see them. I grew up in a German Pennsylvania dutch community in which euphemis was looked upon as a dangerous and insulting form of lie.