Although I find it interesting, what's the point of the article other than "look how most Americans are ignorant about world geography"?
And what do I gain from it?
And what do I gain from it?
Is a "look at how ignorant non-Europeans are about world geography?" going to have a different result? (And I would be quite curious to know how many, say, British or Spaniards can accurately place Ukraine on a map. I have a sneaking suspicion that the number is surprisingly low).
This coming from a non-American, by the way.
Assuming ignorance would fall in the same spectrum compared to other nationalities, you don't hear other nationalities confidently stating their opinions about things they know nothing about.
To be fair, I don't have data to back that up, but I can tell you from my personal observations that people usually refrain from commenting or are reasonably educated about the topic.
Why this is important in this case is because it's largely a matter of geo-politics, and if you don't even know where the damn country is, you should not seriously suggest a certain course of action.
99.9% of the Americans I talk to every day are refraining from commenting about whether the US should intervene in the Ukraine. But, then, I'm not asking.
However, does the fact that if you don't know where the country in question is located, and out of war|no war, you choose war, not strike you as somewhat weird?
I'd like to think most people would always choose no war over war ESPECIALLY if they're uneducated about the situation.
Not that that's what's going on here, but I think that's the image that many Americans have of America's place in the world. It's not especially enlightened, but I don't think the people are warmongers, they probably honestly think it's just the right thing to do and that it would have very little in the way of consequences for anyone. It's the latter part that probably correlates with not knowing much about the world outside America's borders.
What nationality are you, again? :P
I took it as look how most Americans are ignorant about world geography AND how much they want to intervene in something they know nothing about.
Here the article claims that a desire to intervene is correlated with a lack of geographical knowledge. _That_ is the point.
Your comment, whether you meant it to or not, comes off as the sort of defensive reaction that is so very common when any article on the Internet claims something that can be interpreted as putting down Americans.