It's darkly amusing to read this because drugs have been ravaging the inner cities for decades and "city people" (as you call them) have been saying this for about 50 years. The response from the rest of the country was the War on Drugs. You might've heard of it? See, it was widely believed that black and brown people suffered from problems of "culture" and the only solution was mass incarceration.
Anyways, I don't see this sudden outpouring of sympathy for rural whites accomplishing much of anything. There won't be a "egalitarian awakening" -- political polarization and paralysis is only going to deepen and solidify. At the end of the day Americans don't give a shit about the poor whether they're inner city blacks and latinos or rural whites. The national conversation right now, keep in mind, is about whether Meals on Wheels is "delivering results" and how much to increase the military budget by.
But then even if America wanted to I doubt that America could handle the sort of systemic disaster that is runaway inequality. It's a structural issue; the country simply wasn't built for dealing with such a threat, it's too big, too decentralized, and ultimately too capitalistic. The only thing that stopped the runaway inequality of the 20s was the Depression and World War. In that light, I suppose, one could actually think the GOP's destruction of of the modern regulatory framework and the rabid anti-China rhetoric is a good thing.
I don't know what our future is, but the inequality is not good. Are we headed for a major catastrophe? I hope not, but look how bad Germany was before WW2, and how rapidly they have changed since. I hope that's not what it takes to turn things around.
If people can live in these communities with an income that is middle class, they will help the communities to prosper, which may help reverse the trend towards suicide and drug use. I sometimes eat at the restaurants and shop in the stores of my small town. Our insurance agents and lawyers are there, and we do our banking there. Having real opportunities to maybe open a store, or work at the insurance office for the residents there might help their lives improve.
My cousin's son died of a heroin overdose, and he was the nicest, funnest guy. Everyone loved him. Do city people think that those who are suffering are just losers who deserve their fate? That is simply not true. Many have families who love them, and the potential to have a good life, but heroin is such a strong addiction. They need help, not condemnation. I think the de-criminalizing it is essential to solving the crisis. My cousin's son would maybe have survived and gotten help if his friends would have brought him to an ER. I think they were afraid of getting arrested and having their place raided by police, and they rationalized that he would probably be ok by morning. If they didn't have the threat of legal problems over their heads, they might have called 911 when he was unresponsive. Instead, they decided to wait it out, and he died.
These are not easy problems to solve, and it will require people to challenge their ideas about who needs fast internet, and who the people affected by the heroin epidemic are.