Originally Posted By: Shannow
Nah, that's rubbish, and implies that you only know about a country because you've got one of their bases in it, or have access to news headlines.
Some places actually teach a subject called "geography", which stresses that there ARE actual countries and peoples other than your own, and encourage learning about said countries, cultures and practices.
And you get graded based on that understanding.
Of course, my post was a bit angrily tongue in cheek...gotta say that it really ticks me off when people go to an apparently US-hosted website using largely US-developed technology to bust on how terrible the US is and how stupid its people are. I generally don't go online to tell foreigners how ridiculous their countries are, and, unless you happen to be Japanese, German, Canadian, or Italian, I haven't even been to your country to experience what it is like at all. I doubt many of the people who are trashing the US on here have been here at all, or have visited enough to really know anything meaningful about my country.
America is a country of great extremes, wealth included. Many of our poorer citizens get really reprehensibly bad educations...many of our wealthier citizens do not take advantage of the tremendous educational opportunities available to them and end up being ignorant despite their wealth. However, I still suspect that almost all of my neighbors and coworkers could find England on a map...if we took a drive over to the other side of the tracks, maybe some of those more unfortunate folks would struggle. I would suggest that I could find plenty of communities in England, Australia, or Croatia where geography would not be an area of particular expertise...perhaps we could start with a disadvantaged aboriginal community in Australia? Jay Leno could probably make a really funny (highly edited) video of ignorance in such a place.
To sum up, I would suggest that the international posters here who have such contempt for the US should find sites hosted in their own countries in which to discuss motor oil and such. And, maybe, sod off as well?