Stephan:   While China, Europe, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Gulf States have spent their money building high speed rail, metropolitan light rail, parks, high speed internet, and high quality healthcare, child care and elder care, we have poured our billions into bombs, the F-35, and war. Looking back across the last 15 years it is obvious which was the better choice. I think this has only been possible for two reasons: Politics and corporate media have focused almost exclusively on producing and manipulating fear in the service of their profit. Second, because 64% of Americans have never been outside of the borders of the U.S. and as a result have little or no experience or understanding of what life in the rest of the world is like. If they have any image of life outside of the U.S. it is impoverished Africa or Latin America and by that standard we look great. Every time I fly outside the U.S. there are always a few people aboard who are making their first trip abroad. I recently was in Munich airport having breakfast before catching my next flight. At the table next to me was a family who were going home from what was apparently their first trip outside of American borders. Their conversation, which I could not help but overhear, consisted mostly of "Wow, did you see that.... I wish we had a highway like that one.... Boy this is better than our airport in Detroit..." And it is only going to get worse, as this important essay makes clear.