oh jeeze, really, jibby Americans(or rather people from the USA) do have a Mentality that everything else in the world isn't worth checking out or caring or is cheap 3rd world or whatever the case may be, Ive heard them all. take your typical back woods redneck, they think driving a car that's not made in the USA is Blasphemy, wile there driving a Chevy pickup that's was manufactured in Mexico. go figure. Americans (or rather people from the USA) tend to hear only what they want to hear.and becouse of this tend to be very misinformed. for the last week i did a little side work for a friend of my boss, the guy i had to work with hates Barack Obama, OK that's fine but his reasoning is because Obama studied Islam as a kid "over there" as he put it, referring to the middle east IE. to him the place where everyone is a terrorist, in actuality obama did live in Indonesia and his mother enrolled him in a Islamic school at about the age 6 or so.
this is a classic case of Americans (or rather people from the USA) hearing only what they want to hear ending up being very misinformed on subjects yet still vocal about the, and not being accepting to other cultures
I lived in japan for a wile, omg i heard every horrible misconception about japan, everything from "why do the Japanese even have cars" cant you just walk across the island?" to "what is it like living in a 3rd world country?"
Americans (or rather people from the USA) have this odd mental picture of the world where there is the USA, and then there is woods all around, maybe some desert and some ocean and well there are a few of those famous city's like London, Tokyo, Sydney, but all the rest is woods right?
American (or rather from the USA) media is horrible, everything, i mean everything is all about the wow factor or the OMG factor, so every single news story has to be twisted to the point where it has lots of wows and OMGs but has nothing to do with what they are trying to report about.
In contrast, people in japan where well aware of what was going on around the world. they had more understanding of the American political system then most Americans, news over there covered the truth, no sugar coating, not glorifying maybe a little but not so much that i have to question if its true or not, how i watch the news for 5 Min's here and find holes in all the stories.
its really hard to see unless you live in another place for a wile, go take a long vacation to Europe but don't spend 100% of your time visiting tourist spots, go actually live there for a week or so, watch the news, go grocery shopping, get a feel for how life works in a different place, you will come back to the USA enlightened on how corn fed misinformed we really are over here. and you will understand the rest of the worlds anti-American attitude.
as for the term Americans, as you may have noticed i hate, America is a pair of contents that house many many country's including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, chili Honduras, Guatemala, to name a few, this is a world issue. but we need a term that defines people from the USA. USAns or something.