Edit: If it wasn't obvious, everything but the first sentence is sarcasm. I want nothing to do with living in or near a city and it follows that I don't want where I live becoming less rural.
Ultimately it wasn't the right balance of priorities for me. No need to take offense though. I'm sure you're one of those people who either hates NYC or says "great place to visit, but I'd never want to live there". Doesn't bother me :)
And yeah, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but rural Tennessee is full of "backwards hicks". Doesn't make them bad people but our views do not align and I don't want to live in that culture any more than they (you?) want to move the Upper West Side.
I'm surprised that it comes as news to some people that the political views and lifestyle preferences of people living in rural Tennessee are starkly different from those of people living in Manhattan. Or that while we can and should be civil with people elsewhere geographically and politically, people with diametrically opposed views and value systems are rarely all that eager to spend their lives together.
City people should stay in the cities and country people should stay in the country and as long as neither group tells the other how to live we should be fine.