Of course Americans in small towns are bitter.
The jobs are gone and WalMart took em. Price of fuel is so high running machinery and trucking one's ass to the next town to get nails, bolts, milk and coffee will break you. As will the inflation on the goods purchased. The local hospital's twenty plus miles away if you're lucky and only staffed by a shoe-string crew due to the high cost of administrative overhead. The local co-op has been killed by Monsanto and ConAgra. The creeks are drying up and shipping in water will kill any hope of profit. The government wants to subsidize you to either not plant or plant only corn for corn syrup (population fattening agent) or ethanol (cheating other nations from the opportunity to buy food) while they tout you as the reason to eliminate the inheritance tax.. not that you had anything left to inherit. Hell yeah you're bitter. Hunting is the only fairly inexpensive amusement left and it puts food on the table.
It may not sound pretty and the overwhelming aspect may get lost in the nuance but the facts remain, the middle class, the small town America (and the dream) are all dying a slow painful death while corporate welfare continues to suck at the government's teat.
Brought to you by a healthy dose of no-fucking-shit.