We germans publicly joke about the fact that visiting the older part of your family in those "nice small villages" is always one hell of a culture shock, to put it friendly. Which starts with not saying anything about what they have for political opinions and questions regarding your choice of clothes, sexuality and job.
They probably even have their own town slang. Not any "high german". This is 100% comparable to the political landscape that you have in America (city vs farms outside).
I recently heard a term for this, forgot what it was. It happens when young people move into a large city, live there for a while, become quite liberal (what else is there to do, when so many very different people live close together, than to respect everyone's differences) and then interact with their very conservative parents. It is indeed a culture shock, some conversation topics become so sensitive they are best avoided. I guess it happens everywhere.
The villagers probably have been dealing with all sorts of issues from that, then comes a new American, same as all the old ones, wanting to chit-chat and talk about the weather... Newsflash: Germans might not be into that kind of small talk.
In many places zwarte piet now has charcoal smudges over the face, because she or he climbs in and out of chimneys to deliver presents to kids.
Strange fact, on Curacao zwarte Piet is painted extra black and Sinterklaas is painted white [0], at least on some occasions.
[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=curacao+zwarte+piet&iax=ima...
Original black face will go away (which makes me happy), but not over night.
I'm not left wing though, that's probably 90% of it. There are reasons that these people choose to live far away from metropolitan centres, it feels completely reasonable to respect that.
There's an entire demographic who votes green simply because they want nicer forests to drive their BMW through, and if you want to go for the oversimplification route, die Linke are boomers who want the USSR back and AFD are zoomers who want the third reich back.
They don't have first past the post so they're not tied into an us vs them dichotomy
Maybe she's never been stationed near a small town in the United States? I used to be stationed at Camp Lejeune, which is located in Jacksonville, North Carolina. The locals are downright hostile to the Marines. One day I lost it on a shop owner who treated me like dirt and muttered some comment about those goddamned marines upon which I spun around on my heel and pointed out he sure doesn't mind taking their money! When I got back to base I told the NCO authorizing leave passes about it and they put up a sign warning Marines to not visit that store. After losing a substantial amount of business the guy started singing a different tune.
Anyway, all that is to say small towns are different and they're not as accepting of outsiders. Even in the United States.
I think there are probably towns in the US where she will feel the same btw. Is it really about Germany as the title suggests? Feels like a generalization.