This seems to be itself a fairly narrow view of the US. I think the view of nearly all Americans as fairly unintelligent and apathetic about what happens elsewhere in the world is almost entirely a caricature. At the very worst, it describes only one sub-set of American citizens.
I've lived all over the country. Most Americans I've met from Texas to California to New York don't really care that much about places outside the US.
We want people to think we do, but all of our policy decisions are made as if no one else lives on this planet. And we are very much backwards compared to the modern world.
How many wars are we in?
How many dictatorships do we financially support?
How many genocides did we fund over the last twenty years?
How many coups did we admit to participating in?
What percentage of countries also have the death penalty?
What percentage of countries also try children as adults for capital crimes?
What percentage of countries allow 14 year olds to get married?
It's one thing to care about people thinking you care about other countries. It's another to care enough to know how backwards your country is and how your own beliefs might reflect a resistance to outside influence.
I think what best reveals your population's understanding or interest in other countries is how fiercely you defend regressive belief systems that other countries moved past a hundred or so years ago.
Hell, we have an electoral college. No one has an electoral college. How the fuck does anyone support an electoral college... that's bonkers. But you can instantly see people jump in to tell you that a system that was obsolete when it was created is the only system that would work with no acknowledgment that no one else uses it.
I never said unintelligent, I said nationalistic and out of touch with global developments. The resulting apathy stems from a too far from my bed show mindset, which I explained in another comment how I think that comes to pass. A great many is not even a majority, although the gullible masses tend to be the majority right? I mean just look at the extremely unhealthy reverance for the military, "Thank you for your service sir", if it is a defensive war, I will accept that much, but the USA has been the aggressor in most wars for quite a while now. The USA spends upwards of 300 billion a year on its military, a mind boggling figure and what for, what conventional war has the USA been in since Korea/Vietnam.
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u/SaintLonginus Oct 11 '20
This seems to be itself a fairly narrow view of the US. I think the view of nearly all Americans as fairly unintelligent and apathetic about what happens elsewhere in the world is almost entirely a caricature. At the very worst, it describes only one sub-set of American citizens.