IMO you can really see this on full display with the Iran war. As a culture, we really can't seem to understand that we're being beaten. No adversary, and certainly not some [$Muslim_Slur] is conceptualized as being able to actual fight us off. The national conception of the entire MENA region is "goatherders with AK 47s and sandals". The idea that Iran is a large, ancient, well-educated, ideologically motivated, industrially advanced civilization with no desire to assimilate into the American way of life is as inconceivable to the American body politic as plate tectonics would be to an Iron Age peasant.