About the USA being insular. What would you think of hemisphere-shaking socioeconomic and political developments right on America's doorstep, yet nobody is reporting on it in any mainstream American press? Read this, and consider the ramifications.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_South_American_NationsBasically the entire continent of South America has been under a united Parliament for the best part of a decade, modelling the entire thing on the EU and working towards a common currency / single passport arrangement. And they have a united military alliance called the South American Defence Council now, loosely modeled on NATO. And basically not one word of this in any mainstream American news source. Clearly because it doesn't advance US interests for Americans to realize that South America isn't the divisive basketcase it was two decades ago. Basically, you only ever hear about South America going to hell in a handbasket, not how much the economies have grown and how much they're now coordinating their own regional self interests and rejecting US meddling in their foreign affairs..
And after that they formed this 33-nation alliance. Which also doesn't warrant any mention in the corporate press apparently. Because literally every single other nation in the hemisphere agreed "America (and Canada) aren't invited". South of the border you now have an economic bloc (with their own parliament in the core countries) and a total population of 600 million, and ~7 trillion in GDP. Them all working together is clearly not good for US strategic power. which is why you probably never heard about any of this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_Latin_American_and_Caribbean_StatesSo yeah, don't trust even nytimes or washington post to tell you what's happening south of the border. They basically turn into a clone of FOX news once it's Latin American affairs. To give you an idea on the under-reporting of Unasur, searching nytimes shows 66 stories referenced that since 2008, or 8 per year. Whereas for e.g. "myanmar" it gets 6111 hits from nytimes, or 235 per year since the name was changed.