Is Italy a country or what?

Girl: I am new in Austin.

Guy: oh, where are you from?

Girl: I am from Italy. 

Guy: I was in Austin my entire life.

Girl: this is the first time I am in the United States. 

Guy: is Italy a city or something? 

Girl ( totally surprised ): ... It is a country. 

Guy: is that as large as Texas?

Girl: ..........!

You may think I made up this conversation, but is a true conversation happened between a girl who recently came to Austin and she is a new student of the university of Texas and a black guy ( no offense I am not providing any racial issues here, I have many black friends who are amazing people, just describing the person) from Austin, Texas. I was witnessing this conversation on a bus.

After I saw this conversation, I did a little bit research and I was amazed to see these questions on the internet: "Is Italy a state, country or city?" (wiki answers), "is Italy a country or a state?" (yahoo answers), "Is Italy a foreign country?" (yahoo answers).

The point is, this is a common issue that many Americans have no knowledge about outside of the country. Even some of them have a little knowledge about their own country. This guy was a student who was majoring music at the university of Texas, as he said. 

Whom we must blame? The guy? His parents? Society? Or education system in united state?

I think this issue comes from all of them plus media and corporation system in the United States. The United States is like a factory that makes robots. Makes people with a certain degree of knowledge to make sure that they will not give a hard time to the spoiled system of society, which has controlled by the corporations

.

I remember one the episodes of the Daily Show, by Jon Stewart. He goes to Iran and asks people about America and most of them give him a lot of information about United States' history, geographical status and political and economical system. He comes back to Ys and asked Americans about Iran. Many of them have no clue what is Iran and one of them who is confident about the information he has said " Iran is a country in Africa." 

This may look funny. Maybe some of us are smiling or even laughing, but if we go to the deep down of the topic, we will find a big issue. A hidden and carefully organized manipulation  system. This system allows the government to get permission from american people to act against or behalf of any nations. They can give American people any stories they want people to believe, and based on many of people have no idea what is the country that the government is talking about, they  will go with the side of the story that American media are offering. 

This is how this government is convincing  its people that for example if they are killing Iraqi people, they are fighting for United States' national security, or if they attack to Panama is a matter of national security, and unfortunately Americans are buying it.

They strongly believe that those soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq are heroes. When soldiers come back to the US, they will be appreciated as brave heroes who saved America from all those enemies. Those enemies are innocent women and children who are the victims of American foreign policy. This foreign policy founds Al-Qaeda and gives puts weapons in the hand of innocent kids in Kongo to kill their own parents. And all these happened under the name if national security and fighting for democracy.

This happens while American government still is arguing over the Gun Control after many students have been killed in multiple  massacres in  different schools. Looks like this issue is not a national security matter.