> I’ve found it fascinating that people cannot coherently talk about a different nations moral failings without equivocating and falling back onto moral relativ

> I’ve found it fascinating that people cannot coherently talk about a different nations moral failings without equivocating and falling back onto moral relativism and what-aboutism regarding how the US is just bad. Translation: "USA, USA, USA, USA". If you think about it not as a citizen or partisan but in terms of systems of human organization, the question to ask is: "Why is it that different nations with different cultures still manage to have some of the same moral blind spots?" In this view, Hitler's concentration camps, Gitmo, and the Russian Gulag are all serving the same function. The difference is in magnitude. The idea that citing equivalence is dishonest rests on the idea that magnitude is all that matters in moral issues. If Jerry Sandusky had only molested one child would he be a significantly better person than he is after molesting dozens? Sorry I don't really feel the need to canonize someone who unlike Sandusky only managed to victimize one person, nor would I feel the need to give Sandusky any credit if a person were discovered who had victimized thousands. My point is that ugly things happen for a variety of reasons. All regimes (the US, NK, Russia, China, etc.) benefit in some way from identifying a class of people to imprison as political prisoners. The US is generally able to keep the number imprisoned fairly small and keep them overseas where they are out of sight and out of mind. Other nations are not able to manage this and must imprison more people. Similarly, any spouse may benefit from intimidating the other spouse in some way. Some do it verbally, while others do it physically. Sure you can get on a moral high horse and say that only the physical form of intimidation is bad, that verbal threats are harmless. That's analogous to the idea that Gitmo is harmless but NK or Russia's treatment of political prisoners is deeply concerning. Note that my argument is not that both are equally bad. They are not. My argument is that they are both bad enough that we have s much stronger moral duty to fix the problems at home before we focus our energy on politicizing similar issues abroad.