I really think if more Americans traveled overseas regularly they would be stunned by how dirty, broken-down, and generally dysfunctional essentially all infrastructure in the US is, both public (roads, buses, trains) and private (cell networks, laundromats).
James, indeed! Even an EMP event natural or man made. Our ancestral heritage tried to send a message forward with megalithic structures. Even the surface of the Cheops pyramid were covered externally with a message forward. It did not survive. We lose so much each human lobotomy