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The USA is simultaneously the smartest and the stupidest country on the planet. It's an amazing paradox. -- Andrew Burke
It's not a paradox, it's a gross statistical error.
If you take a region like San Francisco and Silicon Valley, you have incredibly high numbers of PhD in hard sciences and innovation, and some of the best universities globally. Berkeley for example has the highest number of PhD per capita globally, according to statistics. That's manifest in every way, from the internationalism, the quality of the architecture and pubic places, low crime, highest quality entertainments from live music and theater to film and dining, and generally the tastes of residents.
There are many such university/innovation regions around America, even including Austin, Texas, a state usually known for resource extraction, agriculture, and rednecks. Those areas also tend to vote more "blue" and are more liberal.
Then you have rural regions in every state, but particularly some states known for low population density and agrarian roots, basically where the least skilled immigrants landed, known for provincialism. They're not bad people, they're good people. But historically they're less educated, less technologically advanced, and more provincial. They're struggling to catch up in the high-tech world, and need help. But they're also proud people and tend to be reactionaries as well.
By comparison, there really aren't any habitable areas in Europe with such low population density and such distance from a major metropolitan hub, as we have in places like Montana or Utah for example. Utah has only one major city, Salt Lake, which is 80% of the population. Utah is 220,000 Km2 roughly equivalent to the UK. Yet Utah has 2.5 M people, compared with 61M in the UK.
The South Carolina pageant airhead was hilarious regardless.
