Habu! Thank for joining this discussion. I read what you said twice, and you are quite right - I agree 100% with what you say. There
are some smart Americans who are keen to discover new cultures. I know a guy from the Denver area who I used to work with, and he came over to Britain to work at the UK office. I organised a couple of foreign trips with him - to Antwerp, and to Amsterdam. He couldn't get enough of those places, and wanted to explore different kinds of food in different restaurants. He was also keen to visit various museums, including Amsterdam's famed
Rijks Museum. On food, this was the guy who introduced ME to Lebanese Shoarmas!
Surprising though it may seem to kieran, I have many American friends, and that's
because Habu is right - there really is a class of intelligent Americans. Well of course there is! It's unfortunate that some of the others are so insular. I used to know an American Air Force man (he was actually from Guam) who was stationed at USAF Upper Heyford near Oxford before it closed (peace dividend). And he knew guys (low ranking military types?) who served there for three years, and
never set foot off that base. 
I was incredulous about that. All the food was flown in, and everything was sold priced in US$. Some servicemen probably didn't even know that Britain had its own currency.

All of my American friends fall into the intelligent variety, and that's probably why none of the Americans I know owns a gun. I do not rub shoulders with blue collar workers and low ranking military types, so I can't comment on why they
are so insular and uninterested/unaware of the world around them.
Or the guy who goes to a pub in Scotland and refuses to taste any of the single malts there but orders a bottle of Jack Daniels and tells the locals "Now this is real booze".
Classic example, Habu - exactly the kind of thing I had in mind.
As to the whining Yank from yesterday, she is highly intelligent and was educated at an English school in Oxford. I think she had been tired (west to east jetlag) and was having a bad hair day.
Will the low ranking military/blue collar types ever discover the world? Maybe they are too busy cleaning their collection of guns...