Except that all of Europe is only slightly larger than the United States. The passport argument applies to this too. You expect us to know where a ton of little countries are far, far away from us when you can't even point out all the similar sized states far, far away from you?
Countries over there are the size of states over here. All the states over here just happen to belong to one country unlike over there.
To elaborate more on this ...
The concept of this country is a bit like what the EU has been trying to go twards. Europeans don't seem to understand that the USA was originally 13 different countries that banned together to kick the British out. The idea worked surpisingly well, so they decided to stick with it.
In essence, the USA is 50 countries, that decided to pool their resources in a similar fashion as the EU is now. There were requirements for other parts of the continent to become part of the US, and joining allowed for easier trade within the states.
I know it's not a perfect run down of the US, but it's a basic idea of it. Much of which is eroding.
As far as American's not knowing about the outside world, there is a shitload to keep track of in our own "little" one. I forget the exact numbers, but a large percentage of the US population hasn't left their own state, let alone the country. My step mother left California for the first time in her life at the age of 51. Living in Missouri, a lot of people I talk to haven't left this state, and they are only an hours drive from Illinois. Anyway much of the Fed seems to go and police the rest of the world whether or not the citizens give 2 shits or not, Billy Bob knowing where Dubai is has jack didly to do with whats going on in Iraq. He should be making his voting decisions on actual information about whats going on there, and not discounted because he's not sure if Iraq is somewhere near Iran, or Venzuela.
Lastly, the (public) education system in the USA spends most of it's time brain washing us all to believe we are the greatest place in the world. There are more years in school we learn "US history" than "world history." In fact the only world history I can think I was tought was about the Roman empire and WW2 (which was all about the holocaust and not about the war itself), otherwise it was the conquistadors, American Revolution, Civil War, and
Russians luanching a satellite into space, and AMERICA ON THE MOON BITCH!. My history classes always kind of glossed over other countries achievements. But I was in grade school when the cold war ended (still recall maps on walls of east and west germany).
Now that I think about it, most of my high school education was trying to convince me that the USA was saving the world from communism.
My older brothers history education was even worse, as they practically ignored anything after WW2. We both spent more time on Anne Frank than learning about how and why Hitler came to power, and about how destructive WW1 and 2 were. They seem to give the impression those wars were insignificant and only lasted a few days.
I'm a bit of a history buff (even if I forget most of what I take in) and spend a suprising amount of time reading about the history of other countries, some of which I never knew even existed.