Oh, yeah, the deluded nationalists amongst you guys really talk the talk like pros, shame about not walking the walk. “Reach for our democratic ideals” indeed … sounds lofty and all but strangelly enough it immediatly fails on the hurdle of actually having a genuine selection of political parties to vote for. Beautiful political poetry to make up for quite a different reality - it’s called “Compensation” in Psychology.
As for the second paragraph, that “Look at those other guys in the Middle East” whataboutism is quite a low standard to compare one’s nation against and thus an implicit acceptance of mediocrity, and even those “other guys in the Middle East” manage to have less people in prison than the US. Maybe it’s something in the water.
Next to the rest of the Developed World the US is only an example of Human Rights or of Humanism in any form in the sense of something to avoid not something to emulate. But yeah, you guys sure beat dictatorial shitholes … well maybe not on the size of the prison population and their use as forced labour and on police shootings…
And yeah, I do have it very good compared to that shit over there, and had it very good in all other countries in Europe I lived in - in Europe you have to go so far to East that you reach Russia to get a colder and more inhumane system than the one to the West of us across the Atlantic.