> As someone who grew up in rural Wisconsin, I can tell you that there has always been a streak of anti-intellectualism, but the past few years it has transformed into something even worse.

Not just Wisconsin. I grew up in a rural town in the South, and it was horrible. I'm back there teaching and it's even worse, if such a thing is possible. The only light I see is that a vast majority of the non-"yee yee" kids are fairly left-leaning, and nobody actually questioned me when I mentioned global warming yesterday. Shame is, those kids usually get the hell outta Dodge and never return.