Having your groceries delivered or buying a moped or motorcycle might be an option for you. I don’t think anyone on here would begrudge you using a car in that situation, though.
I think the anti-rural sentiment you sometimes see, mostly stems from how unsustainable and car dependent the lifestyles a lot of people who live outside cities are. People who find a job in a city to get a high pay, move out of said city to get a garden and then commute back and forth between their home office and their work office, with very little concern for how they effect the world around them. They take no personal responsibility and don’t want to take collective responsibility either, because that could threaten their lifestyle.
People who live in suburbs, villages or rurally because that is where it makes sense for them to live, isn’t an issue. It makes sense to move to the countryside when you retire and no longer have to be anywhere. It also makes sense to live in the countryside if that is where you work or if you work from home. Some of these people would benefit greatly from owning a car, while others can get by just fine with a bicycle or their own legs.
You can also do a lot to lessen the dependence on cars outside city centers. You can easily run metros and trams into the suburbs and encourage a higher density (more row houses and smaller apartment complexes). Rurally you can encourage people to build villages (clusters of houses) instead of every house being spaced evenly apart, and you can run bus lines through those villages.
I think you could argue that this is an example of cognitive dissonance. It is uncomfortable to come face to face with new information that contradicts your beliefs or actions, and it requires energy if you want to integrate that new information into your worldview and adjust your actions. It is much easier to deny that information, even when it is clearly true.
For example, when it came out that aspartame might cause cancer, if you (like me) have eaten/drunk a lot of products containing it or have had a strong belief that it was completely safe, then it may be more comfortable for you to criticize WHO or think “well, it’s not really relevant for me because my family isn’t predisposed for cancer.” If you didn’t care about aspartame or artificial sweeteners before, you will probably readily accept that there may or may not be a cancer link.