[Veratyr]

I'm an Australian living and working in the SF Bay and my wife (Russian) and I have noticed the same thing. Americans in general seem to live in a bubble. Of course pretty much everyone lives in a bubble of some kind but the American bubble seems to be stronger than many.

It makes a lot of sense to me though. America, like Europe, has a huge amount of diversity in things to do and places to go. It would take a lifetime to see everything worth seeing in America and I can see why the effort (and cost) of going to say Europe or Asia wouldn't seem appealing when you can go see something domestically like the Grand Canyon, the museums in DC or any of the numerous different cities/states.

So Americans don't have as much reason to travel I think and given that the American economy is so enormous and the country is physically isolated from the rest of the world, ultimately, the state of the world outside America doesn't impact an American as much as it does a European.

This isn't to say that this is right but I think this at least somewhat provides some reason for the way things are.