it would seem to be past the limits of most Anglophone Americans to be bilingual. Well I understand that in a lot of places in the USA the Anglophones are in a minority, and the majority of people are bilingual. So they'll just have to extend their limits if they want to get by.

And they will too. Just because someone is an English monoglot doesn't mean they are thick.

But Clinton's comment about sign language as a universal alternative language makes a lot of sense. Nobody has worked out a way to do sign language on the net though so far. Has anybody ever tried to work out a way to do written sign language which would incorporate the universal quality of sign language? Is it even conceivable that that might in fact be possible?