There is a difference between being concerned about the issues and being affected by them. Americans may not be concerned about e.g. the Middle East, but you cannot possibly say that it doesn't affect them.
I don't think I said that Iraq didn't affect them. But I think that at some level, most Americans are still fundamentally not
concerned, despite the number of troops over there. And I think their lack of concern is being carefully nurtured by various governmental and pressure groups, because lack of concern keeps anyone from calling for any sweeping changes in the United States itself.
Just as a simple analogy -- electricity affects almost every aspect of my life, but I'm not especially concerned about it. It's there when I need it to be, and if it goes out for some reason (a power line breaks or something), I simply phone the relevant person and it gets sorted out. I'm affected by it, but I'm not especially concerned.
But it isn't "useless": How can you understand e.g. geopolitical issues if you have no idea where the countries are, what their background are, etc?
Why does one need to understand geopolitical issues? I don't understand electricity -- and the whole point of the power grid and the electric companies is that I don't need to understand it. It's there when I want it to be (or I phone someone who
does understand it). The bright young men in the white lab coats will sort it all out of something goes wrong -- that's what they get paid to do, to understand electricity.
Part of the problem with our current technological society is that one
can't understand everything, and one needs to rely on specialists. (The standard example I've often heard is that no one single person in the entire world could make a pencil by himself.) I consider myself reasonably broadly educated, but I can name dozens of services I demand, literally on a daily basis, that I couldn't myself perform and I don't need to understand. I can't harvest coffee, I can't mill paper, I can't manufacture fiber-optic cable, I can't refine petrol, I can't bind a book, I can't vulcanize rubber, I can't injection-mold plastics, et cetera. I also can't set a bone, fill a cavity, weld pipe, lay brick, adjust spark plug timing, install lock-sets, make cheese, butcher a steer, .... the list goes on and on.
I can, however, find Afghanistan on a map. Let's look at just how useful that skill is. How often do you need someone to butcher a steer for you? Let's see what happens when you wander in to the local butcher's shop, and you say "I need a half-kilo of sausages. I don't have any money on me right now, but I can find Afghanistan on a map for you. Perhaps we can cut a deal?"
Now, I probably
could cut a deal if what I offered was to re-paint the butcher's house, or lay a new brick walkway for him, or fill his daughter's cavities, or even haul the weeds out of his back garden. But what hole in the butcher's life can I fill with my knowledge of how many people there are in the United States?
