I agree with your last statement totally I grew up partically outside of the US in a nonwhite 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 lowestcommon denominator of intelligence in entertainment and news programming I havent wathced Amercin network news programs intentionally in over  years as they spend  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 pm and listen to an hour of BBC World Radio news coverage  now THAT was comprehensive Dont know if theyre still that way or not Also US governmentrun schools are atrocious and spend little time on world events outside of Americas 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 worlds problems are our fault I guess the fall of the various Eqyptian Empires was our fault since the US wasnt there to make it worse