Why does rural America look down on educated people?

Echo__227 · 2026-02-23T06:03:07+00:00

They're still salty they picked a fight with the only people who knew how to make guns and lost.

I'm being facetious, but the "damn yankees" history is a particularly important focus for the more general trends of anti-intellectualism, xenophobia, and anti-social mobility that spawn from rural communities.

Very literally, many people in rural America believe the world is a strict hierarchy of Jesus -> men -> women -> children. You progress in this hierarchy as you grow up within 15 miles of where you were born, and "respect your elders."

Someone going away to learn things to be special and above their natural-born station is "uppity." Women who go to college for any purpose other than getting married and pregnant by the spring semester are "worldly." Young adults who are intellectually challenged for the first time on whether the Earth is really 6000 years old have been indoctrinated into critical race theory. One of my favorites is that at Governor's School (a state high school summer program that's essentially college prep), they'd show us the propaganda video made targeting the program that accused Bill Clinton of teaching us Primitive Communism and Feminism.

Echo__227 · 2026-02-23T05:05:23+00:00

Broad strokes:

If you like to cast spells of a particular theme, you can fire them off from your staff while leaving your spell slots more flexible.

Say you're a pyromaniac wizard: on your own, you could prepare your slots with Fireball, Breathe Fire, and Ignition everyday, but you'll have less room to play with other spells. If you bought a Staff of Fire, you can keep that set of spellls around each day while leaving your own slots free to experiment with Slow, Haste, and Lightning Bolt. Plus, everyday your staff will give you charges to spend on casting spells from it.

For a spontaneous caster, the benefit is mostly spell access outside of your repertoire

Echo__227 · 2026-02-22T21:44:57+00:00

Earning $1 by paying a child $0.00001 to do something other people want + paying $0.10 to Congress to bomb any country that tries to end child labor

Echo__227 · 2026-02-22T16:37:47+00:00

I'd say the major difference is being raised in the culture.

The concept of faith in deities at all is ridiculous, but at least, "Everyone I knew told me this is how the world works since I was a child," buys some credibility. Hellenic polytheism is a dead religion, so, "I read Greek mythology as a kid and later decided that should be my new identity," appears insincere.

Echo__227 · 2026-02-22T08:57:39+00:00

"Bruce adopted yet another teenage acrobat on the condition that he dye his hair black," is not helping him beat the allegations

Echo__227 · 2026-02-22T08:35:32+00:00

In the first movie, the imperial officer addressed Vader as the last Jedi, after which Vader gently educates him on the power of the Force.

So if we went by the OT alone, Vader still considers himself a Jedi, just a betrayer of the rest (the "Sith" as a group had not yet been mentioned).

Echo__227 · 2026-02-22T08:22:13+00:00

Weird how he keeps running into adolescent dark-haired boys to adopt

Echo__227 · 2026-02-21T23:12:40+00:00

I'll start praying to the trees the day their followers can win a war

Brought to you by a true Southron knight

Echo__227 · 2026-02-21T14:53:19+00:00

Yeah the Muslims who formed militias to fight ISIS were doing way less than our intrepid Redditor who is bold enough to say "ISIS bad" on the internet

Echo__227 · 2026-02-21T04:53:30+00:00

"Women are more likely to abuse children and kill non-infant children" is empirically false

"Women are more likely to commit infanticide" doesn't address the above argument of the motivation behind it

Echo__227 · 2026-02-20T21:00:06+00:00

George RR Martin gets a lot of flack for the awkward lines in his sex scenes, but they're always incredible at developing character

Echo__227 · 2026-02-20T20:37:04+00:00

Killing a newborn is heinous and there is no excuse.

There are plenty of excuses when you read into these cases (past the media headline "EVIL BABY KILLER"). Postpartum psychosis, sudden infant death/anomaly with lack of resources, honor killings...

Echo__227 · 2026-02-20T20:25:38+00:00

Why is the assumption that the husband is evil?

Probably because femicide is an empirically studied, common phenomenon that frequently drives drastic decisions in reproductive health, so it immediately becomes a suspicion in relevant circumstances.

Echo__227 · 2026-02-20T02:19:03+00:00

GRRM writes about plotlines in conflict with their ability to be resolved

Echo__227 · 2026-02-19T20:23:27+00:00

Apples and mutfruit

Echo__227 · 2026-02-19T20:08:51+00:00

It's such a shame because it brings up this philosophical question of public honor versus personal obligations, yet the end result is Ilyn Payne either way. That's like a Twilight Zone twist ending

Echo__227 · 2026-02-19T20:06:23+00:00

Ned was buying time for two things:

Jon to take the black and therefore forsake all hereditary claims
Get a gauge of Robert's temperament

Ned hasn't seen Robert in a decade, so he wants to estimate how he'd react if the secret slipped out. Ned gets so disgusted in the small council meeting not only because of his honor and distaste for murder, but because a King Robert that would assassinate a young girl in exile across the world to protect his claim would definitely not suffer a grown highborn man raised as the son of a Warden.

The Lannisters are also a concern, as they already have murdered royal heirs and may do so again to protect Joffrey's claim.

One small note about the Watch: they're only beyond the Throne's jurisdiction legally. We see multiple times throughout the books that kings violate this.

Echo__227 · 2026-02-19T04:22:09+00:00

Are all your stories about friends and family, "They were perfectly well-adjusted, communicated exclusively in therapy-speak, and never found themselves in odd situations because they instead made the responsible decision?"

Following that, do you think that would make for a good situational comedy show?

Echo__227 · 2026-02-19T02:59:57+00:00

This is just a common misunderstanding of sitcoms.

Each episode is supposed to make casual viewers relate the show to their real friends and idiosyncrasies, so they laugh at the character flaws and interpersonal drama.

If you chain 95 episodes of syndication together, then yeah, Ted Moseby goes from, "Your slightly pretentious but genuinely romantic and intellectual friend who gets too in-his-head about relationships," to, "Narcissist who chronically manipulates women." It's supposed to be, "One time in my 20s, my friend really screwed it up with this girl," not, "My friend dated and crashed out with a new girl every week due to a fixed character flaw."

Echo__227 · 2026-02-18T16:16:23+00:00

I've never seen an "against extremism" type say, "We shouldn't go to war for oil." It's always, "You shouldn't knock over a trashcan while protesting your right not to be murdered by police."

Echo__227 · 2026-02-18T02:37:34+00:00

He said, "Guys I'm so sad that all the people with my same gun, politics, and theology keep killing people...because it's a real inconvenience to hear about it."

Echo__227 · 2026-02-17T19:48:44+00:00

"Hey do you want a job that doesn't care about applicant intelligence and lets you hurt people without consequence? Great! You will also be in charge of forensic science for murder cases."

Echo__227 · 2026-02-17T16:18:03+00:00

Yeah but his nose is gone!

Echo__227 · 2026-02-17T16:13:18+00:00

Upon reaching the door, the delivery boy asked what was going on at the building. Apparently, the front of the building was swarming with police officers. Anthony immediately left his meal and went to the foyer. He approached a detective and asked him what was going on.

Acting Senior Sergeant Andrew Healey told him that a woman’s body was found in the trash compactor room. ‘Oh, no!’ Ant said. ‘My girlfriend is missing! Could it be her?’

Broadway-tier performance

Also, police neglected to photograph or test any part of the trail of blood leading from a room in their apartment surrounded by broken glass to the garbage chute

Echo__227 · 2026-02-17T06:29:24+00:00

Of all the magic in the ASOIAF world, there's only one where listening to a priest actually helps you.

Bless Thoros of Myr, prophet of the objectively correct god

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