I agree with your last statement totally I grew up partically outside of the US in a non white commonwealth nation and realize how bad that myopic view many Americans have is I assign most of the blame to the current US media obsession with targeting the lowest common denominator of intelligence in entertainment and news programming I haven t wathced Amercin network news programs intentionally in over 20 years as they spend 22 minutes on expanded personal stories with litte har American news coverage much less anything else from the rest of the world I grew up where you could turn on the radio at 3 pm and listen to an hour of BBC World Radio news coverage now THAT was comprehensive Don t know if they re still that way or not Also US government run schools are atrocious and spend little time on world events outside of America s di direct interaction and currently most of that is in a purely negative light So not only do they no nothing of the rest of the world they think all the rest of the world s problems are our fault I guess the fall of the various Eqyptian Empires was our fault since the US wasn t there to make it worse