196

Yeah, the US prison system is absolutely abhorrent and counterethical to all the principles it's supposed to hold.

First, the US is basically the only western country like that:tm:, second, more than one thing can be bad. "'North Korea is a great country' is a dumb position", the only (implied) assertion I made about it in my original comment, is still true, even if they got dealt a shit hand (which, so did most of the east after WW2; South Korea was in a pretty similar state (it was actually worse than NK shortly after the Korean war), yet they're doing... much better than NK at least).

Being "basically bombed to the stone age" doesn't mean a dictatorship is inevitable, nor that their government is suddenly blameless; being victimized doesn't mean you can victimize others.

Genuinely, if you take "the west" as a whole and compare it to North Korea... yeah, I do think they have a high ground. No, I'm not saying the west is perfect, far from it. No, I'm not saying communism is automatically bad, I'm totally cool with communists.

Basically my base position is "a functional democracy is the governance system that works the best". Most western states are much closer to that than North Korea (yes, I know what the Electoral College is and why it's bad), so I do think their political system is better.