Sounds like you read Umair Haque?

Yes, unregulated greed-based capitalism is a terrible system, but it is still superior to all that came before it.

The majority of Americans are under educated, misinformed, and don't possess a passport.

They've never been anywhere where English isn't spoken and money isn't green. Therefore, they don't know the difference between a Social Democracy with a regulated capitalist economy and a Socialist state where the government owns the means of production and distribution. There is no left wing progressive party in the US. There is only center right and far right, and the radicals are the ones on the far right.

I think the younger generation raised on the Internet is changing this dynamic. They have friends that live outside America, and they talk to them.

I am pretty amazed as to how MSNBC for example is broadcasting from Poland, Hungry and even Ukraine, using just the Internet and a small camera, a battery powered LED light setup, and tiny microphones. Yet, they are getting the MSNBC audio feed from NYC in their ear and scripts sent to them online.

This was simply not possible 20 years ago. Vietnam was supposed to be the first Living Room War, but it was shot on film, processed in a lab outside Vietnam (mostly Hong Kong or Bangkok), and uploaded by expensive satellite links to NYC, where it was transferred to magnetic tape and edited for broadcast. At best, we saw it a day and a half after it happened.

I am grateful to my European-born ex for one thing: she got me to Barcelona before breaking up with me. I lived there for two years, made friends, and am still in contact with many of them. I had Spanish National Health Care for free. My friends got one month paid vacation and 18 paid holidays, mostly on Mondays, making 18 three-day weekends a year. The quality of life in Western Europe is far better than in the U.S. And I never worried about being shot by some crazy person with a gun.