Why are DUers buying into this crap about Iran from the corporate media?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

43. Americans are astoundingly ignorant of the histories and cultures of other countries

And so many of them don't want to know. That's what gets me.

As a former foreign language teacher who planned cultural activities and tried to arrange interactions with foreign students, I was deeply frustrated at how many college students, supposedly the upper 1/3 in intelligence, told me that foreign movies were "boring," reading about foreign countries was "boring," foreign students were "boring." It was as if "boring" was their catch-all phrase for "I don't know about this and I don't want to know."

Back when my high school hosted foreign exchange students, the questions that not only students but local adults would ask were embarrassing. "Do you have stores in Japan?" "Do you have cars in Norway?" "Do you have doctors in Argentina?" "Have you ever seen a kangaroo?" (This to an Austrian exchange student).

A friend of mine expatriated in Japan (not a DUer) said that among his vast extended family, the most conservative people were the ones who rarely left their home country and had no desire to. In his family, the people who had traveled and especially lived overseas were the farthest left.

I see the same thing in my own family. The left and right orientations are in direct proportion to experience outside one's comfort zone. Lately, there has been research to show that liberalism correlates with intellectual curiosity and a desire for novelty.