“The general rule is that comparing your systems against other countries is worthwhile, and is what most every other country manages to do for breakfast.”

If most every other country managed to do this for breakfast, most every other country would be ahead of even the best parts of the US. The fact that the US and Europe as a whole are roughly comparable proves this simply can’t be correct.

“Dismissing other countries because “The entirety of NZ has a population comparable to the size of a large metro area in the US” is the problem. Start fixing that attitude..”

I’m not dismissing other countries. What I’m dismissing is this claim of a fix that everyone else is applying and that the US is not.

You mention strawmen in another part of the thread, presumably you must realize that the idea that California’s problems stem from an ‘attitude’ is a strawman.

As I point out elsewhere, the entire message you are delivering here is to attack America with this strawman and claim (now) that almost everyone else is governing better.

When asked for a single idea about how others are doing better, you simply say ‘look at other countries’ and admit that this is a vague handwave.

Have you considered asking people why they think there is nothing better? You might discover they have different values to you.

Drilling down on policy would be much more meaningful than claiming America’s problems stem from an ‘attitude’ you don’t like.

> the entire message you are delivering here is to attack America with this strawman and claim (now) that almost everyone else is governing better.

I am trying to help - you are perceiving that as an attack and you continue to incorrectly try and tell me how I think - an obvious impossibility.

> and claim (now) that almost everyone else is governing better.

Throughout this thread I talk about looking to countries that are doing things better, obviously not every country!

You choose to misrepresent a throwaway joke comment as having some deeper meaning: “What most every other country manages to do for breakfast” is an allusion to the now mostly obsolete habit of reading about international news in the morning paper, nothing nefarious.

“Watching the arc of excuses made by citizens of the US has been a black comedy: it started with excuses about how China managed to control Covid, it moved on to different excuses when some other Asian countries managed low death counts, then the excuses changed again once some first world countries got their shit together. The underlying premise was “USA #1” therefore if another country is doing better then let’s pipe up with a irrelevant excuse meme. The pattern is tragically hilarious.”

Seems like what you mean by ‘trying to help’, is to assert that and that the US problems are the result of excuses and an attitude problem.

Do you seriously think that no Americans are interested in how other countries do things? As people have pointed out elsewhere, one of the two major political parties makes a point of citing other countries as models.

You say you are trying to help, but you haven’t offered any helpful suggestions.

You keep saying other countries are better governed, but somehow you haven’t identified a single thing the US could actually do to govern better.

It’s entirely possible that what looks like ‘better government’ isn’t a feature of a system at all, and just the result of a simpler situation of not having had to face particular challenges.

Without actually saying what the US could do better, you really aren’t making a case for anything.

What we do know, is that you keep saying that other countries are better than the US, and that you firmly believe this.

How is this different from the people who believe that the US is better than other counties? Aren’t you just the mirror image of the thing you are criticizing?