The point I was making wasn't that random massacres of children by ther children in schools (and now in a zoo)mean that the United States is necessarily worse than other places in the world. In all sorts of ways it is better than lots of other places - and in others it is worse. That is something the USA has in common with other countries, including those it regards as pariahs.

I was indicating some scepticism about the glib assumption that comes across from some commentators in the media, and in this thread at times(are we media or not? I think we probably are - we're just not mass media).

I mean the assumption that clearly anybody who isn't crazy or wicked or brainwashed is going to prefer to live in the United States rather than anywhere else, especially Cuba, and that it would obviously be better for Juan Rodriguez to stay in thge States and bring up his son here.

I doubt if there is any depravity committed by the Cuban government that can't be matched by the American government. I doubt if there is any sickness in Cuban society that can't be matched by what has happened and what still happens in America.

And you could say the same about most countries. We see something going wrong over there, and it's a different kind of going wrong from the stuff that we take for granted where we are. And we think we are so much better than they are.

It's been said before, and said better, by someone whom most Americans claim to respect: Do not judge and you will not be judged, because the judgements you give are the judgements you will get...Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the plank in your own? How dare you say to your brother "Let me take the splinter out of your eye", when all the time there is a plank in your own? Hypocrite!Take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brothers's eye.