Americans and everyone else

After a few hundred pages of International Political Economy, with lots of debatable generalizations about what Americans know and think about themselves and the rest of the world. I am glad this book is almost over. Last time I checked I was still an American, born and raised here, and I know I don't fit the stereotype these authors are so fond of constructing. And, for all that it may lend weight to other stereotypes, the room full of American kids in my economics class didn't fit the stereotype the professor threw out so casually about students 'like us' finding the mathematics integrated into economic theory daunting and unpleasant. Really, there were only a handful of us who seemed inclined towards qualitative theory in the whole room, and all of us who are not the statistician/modeller economist types have still completed calculus. Ok, so most of my political science colleagues may not have finished calculus, but in general, the broad generalizations about Americans need reexamination. Just as Third-World countries may be reinforcing their inferior positions in the world through self-sabotage and other such mechanisms, to fit the image they have absorbed of their people, so too Americans may be absorbing increasingly naive world views and growing lazy because these traits fit with what everybody says Americans are like.