joep182, you are 100% accurate about your views of the country as a whole and its foreign affairs. And I agree with you 100%. But I believe this thread is asking about the people of USA no the country. And I think it is very important to point the difference. Again I am entirely behind you on your views of the USA's oligarchical government, but I believe Americans are different than their government, even though they blindly support it.
Over all Americans are very polite and considerate as far as you remain a neutral-stranger. As you get closer and more involve with them you will either be the best of friends or their worse enemy, no middle term. Americans have two and only two polarized stages for every thing; it is black or white, conservative or liberal, religious or atheist, pro-life or against-life, and so on.
Americans' obsession with materialism is the essence of their conformity on superficial information.
Americans religious-faith on their government is the product of the work of the best propagandistic media ever developed in any country (yes, better that the one Hitler put at work on Germany in the 1920s.) Therefore (and I think somebody has mention this on this thread already) Americans take any analysis, criticism (constructive or non-constructive) of their government as a personal attack and therefore as anti-patriotic. Americans would never criticize the basic structure or their democracy for any reason. They believe on "the first thing to better yourself is to acknowledge your mistakes", but not with respect to their democracy. They believe that their democracy is a God-written-on-stone pure thing that needs no criticism or analysis (kind of what Catholics think of their Virgin Mary.)
I have been married to my much-loving American wife for over nine years now. It has taken me over seven years to convince her that my criticism of our American government and the American socio-political structure is not hate for the American people but actually love and care for them. She still doubts it when we start a discussion about a new issue that she has not heard from me before.
I have to say that Americans have lost their country and they don’t know about it. Actual when you read American history (the real thing, Howard Zinn history, no the one taught in the American schools and elsewhere) American people have never had a country. It has always been on the hands of the oligarchy. Perhaps that is why they think I am crazy when I say that USA is a fascist-oligarchical state no a democracy, they don’t recall a change because it has always been the same and it has always been called ‘democracy.’