To the extent that every person is inhibited by the limits of their perception (historically and environmentally), I'm not sure how I can convincingly respond to your accusations. You've foreclosed the possibility of conversation, because now anything except acquiescence to your points will look like "pleasant intellectual games." You assume that you occupy the role as arbiter of "concrete fact," and you've implicitly established a set of criteria for judgment.
The only way I can think to respond is to object to being in a bubble, at least to the extent that it compromises my intellectual abilities. I come from a family that, while we weren't hurting financially, was highly conservative, somewhat religious, and non-college educated. I'm the first of my nuclear and extended (except for one cousin) family to graduate from college. Growing up, I worked summers in a warehouse in a small, Western NY town of about 2500 people. I grew up around guns, racist jokes, and confederate flags. I have family members in upstate NY who post Sid Roth videos on Facebook, and I know it's because they have basically nothing else in their lives--and that's a problem (that they have nothing else in their lives, I mean).
I'm not saying you grew up in a bubble, or don't have some contact with "people who tell racist jokes and own guns." Certainly more contact with the outside world than some I've met. But bubbles are perceptive as well as in contact. Framing the rural, non-college educated as "racist gun clingers" etc is a frame created by living in a bubble of accepted opinion. I live in it too to some degree, I just don't accept it. Is it true that these people are racist? Well, if we mean thinking poorly of other races in general, probably. If we start trotting out other tortured definitions, probably not. But that's an aside. It's conceiving of them through these narrow issues which are arbitrarily magnified. I remember being taught similar frames growing up in an evangelical bubble about "sinners" who "didn't go to church." It's true that they lack other things in their lives, but 1. They may enjoy their life like that and 2. Immigrants aren't the thing they are lacking.
There was a time in America where people across the country had some pride in the major US urban hubs outclassing other major cities in the world. Now there is some real mutual animosity. What changed? So far, the resounding message issuing from academics and the media is "U mad because U suck." No introspection from the side supposedly more capable of doing so.
I also understand that many Westerners feel uncomfortable around Muslims. I've witnessed this firsthand in Buffalo (with members of my family, in a situation that was very uncomfortable for me). And while I personally feel that I mostly understand the impressions and statistics that inform their discomfort, I feel that I completely understand how that discomfort reifies those impressions and statistics in ways that are reductive, selective, and ultimately fuel suspicions if not dislike toward Muslims. I also understand that one response is to admit incompatibility in favor of Western comfort and, arguably, less violence (the argument being that promoting increased interaction between Western liberals and Muslims will only lead to more violence in the future). I understand the merit to avoiding violence. I also like to hope that people's attitudes can change over time, and that Muslims who wish to flee the oppression of some Middle Eastern countries can come to North American or European countries, and live peaceably as citizens of those countries.
People of all walks feel uncomfortable around people very different from themselves without any "education" on the matter. Muslims are at the extremely different end from westerners, and it's a mutual discomfort. There's no objective upside to try and force an override of this natural predisposition among people, and many objective possible downsides (assuming at least death as something reasonably defined as objectively bad). It's certainly possible that integration could peacefully and prosperously occur, but it's an experiment with significant risk being pursued with religious fervor rather than scientific caution.
You're right that generally speaking, rural people are in less contact with non-farming immigrants than urban persons, if by in contact you mean see them. But 1. People in tighter communities are going to be more sensitive to outside threat and 2. Urban people don't really "come in contact" with each other in any meaningful sense anyway. There's also the issue of meeting only the extremes when you do come in contact. The average IQ in Yemen is 85. That's a 1
SD behind the developed world. People generally need at least 115 to succeed in graduate school. So if you meet a successful PhD student refugee from Yemen, that's not indicative of the benefit of bringing in swarms of Yemenese refugees, he's literally 1 out of 100. 50% of the swarm would be functionally intellectually disabled and the rest minimally contributory. Furthermore, we deprive Yemen of the handful of people who could actually help their people sort things out. The "Invade the world/Invite the world" strategy is cruel to all parties involved, except maybe that 1%er and the US liberals who get a little pious buzz out of it (while they make sure to live as far as possible within the same city from the "areas with bad schools" and "crime"). Of course I'm pretty sure this whole paragraph is compiled of many things said before at one time or another, but these issues and perceptions are those held by many across the country, and a continued ignoring of them or furtherance of counter-agendas isn't going to magically make them go away. None of this is to say or suggest that you're in a position to do anything about any of it one way or the other. But it's a lot more complicated than "them stupid racists," which is the summation of the responses to these concerns. When liberals realize that calling people racist as a response to any criticism is becoming as ineffective of an argument as telling an atheist they are going to hell, we might start getting somewhere.
