One has to look at this with the caveat that the subjects 'interviewed' in this clip are what one calls a 'selected sample' (there is really no subject who makes any sense), hence it is a matter of stretching the logic quite a lot to generalize anything to "Americans", as a whole, from watching it. It's not only the USA to have its ignorants (euphemism); whether on average USA has more or less of such specimens than other countries, is quite a difficult question to answer and I am not sure one should hold a firm prior belief on that. Nevertheless, keeping that in mind, I do agree that one can only remain speechless after watching the clip. It's not clear whether ultimately one should laugh or cry...
Some of this reminds me of one unforgettable encounter I had with a female police officer at the reception of one of the NYPD precincts in New York City (I had the very unfortunate experience to have my wallet stolen/lost in the Big Apple, about three years ago, and I had to declare that at the police). Firstly, she never understood (to the point of exasperation) that I did not lose my 'Greencard', no matter how much I explained to her that a temporary residence permit in the Netherlands (which happened to be in my stolen wallet) was not a greencard, had nothing to do with the USA administration and did not stop me in any way of going back to Holland, since I still had my passport- and so that she did not have to worry that 'after 9/11 if you lost your Greencard, we really cannot help you/do anything for you/register your statement, this is much much more complicated, you are in big trouble, you need to go to your Embassy and Consulate and blah blah...', which she kept repeating all the time. But that is not the precise point I wanted to make, this was just the warming up.... My American friend who accompanied me (Bahman, are you reading this? :-)), trying to 'break the ice', so to speak, managed to get the lady to 'confess' that she was from Malta, originally, and that her father was Sicilian (she clearly had a foreign accent), after which he told her that Malta just joined the European Union (this was just after the May 2004 entry in the EU of the 10 new states) and that probably she could now go and work there, for instance. And that since I came from the EU, I could tell her more of what EU is like. So then she looked at me rather happily and asked anxiously: "Really, really?! So you really come from the European Union? And who else joined the EU? Germany?". I told my friend (who could hardly contain his laughter; of course it wasn't him to have lost his wallet...): 'let's go, this is hopeless'. Fortunately, we then went to the main precinct, in the center of Manhattan, and there were three officers at the reception and they immediately understood the whole thing, did not ask any nonsensical questions and registered my statement. So again, what I said above, there are Americans and Americans; as everywhere else there is considerable heterogeneity, of all sorts. Probably (let's strongly hope for that) the 'Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect' motto of the NYPD stands, in general.
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