Now, granted not all Serbs are nationalists, far from it. But OTOH every Serbian nationalist I ever had the dubious pleasure of listening to or reading was quasi insane about it. Like, legit insane due to a diamond-cast narrow-mindedness that transcends the prism of reality you and I exist in. It’s like to these cats Glorious Sjrbja was always destined for greatness but they were betrayed or conspired against at every turn, denied what they were always owed and it’s all just because every other country had unfair advantages - you know, like resources or manpower or technology or a dearth of Serbian nationalists. Like there’s a “realer” world somewhere out there where Serbia isn’t some random post-Byzantine post-Nazi post-Soviet shithole and we’re living in the wrong version of that world, one where history got all screwy and kept getting screwier as time passed. They seem to spend a *lot *of time debating the exact point of the seminal screwy.
Bottomline : we’re all living in Serbian purgatory, folks.
Sounds like maybe countries who blame their current shittiness on external forces decades or centuries before are the ones who are most deluded; Russia and Serbia sure sound very deluded about their places in the world, and choose to blame it on something or someone else.
Stefan Dušan’s mighty world-spanning empire was betrayed! By, you know, Turks and Croats and Hungarians and Bulgarians and Wallachians and Albanians and other unsavory types! They should be speaking Serb in the halls of Paris, not some degenerate and decadent form of Latin!
Tamerlane ( half-Serb and therefore half super-duper-awesome )
The thing is, objectively speaking, many things in France are pretty good (and not a few things are considerably better than in the US).
I think what the OP is looking for is a country which, by objective or common standards, is pretty terrible on most scores, but whose inhabitants still think that it’s wonderful.
Well, depending on what incarceration rate you choose to believe for NK, the US jails more of its own citizens, on an absolute and per capita basis. If you choose the absolute highest informed NK numbers while ignoring the juvenile, awaiting trial and non-state territorial US prisoners, the US still comes in third (Seychelles is tops, but is an outlier IMO because of its tiny population)
Yet Americans, on the whole, seem to be deluded about the existence of their own racist prison-industrial complex while bemoaning the NK police state. “Land of the Free?” Yeah, I’m with Zack De La Rocha on that one
Well, the US could level that playing field by following NK’s lead and making more of it’s populace simply disappear instead of wasting a perfectly good jail cell. Somehow I don’t think that would be acceptable here…
In other news, oranges and apples still compare poorly.
Oh, most definitely the US meets the OPs requirements.
Yes, the US is just like North Korea…but worse. Good pick, as usual. Unbiased and hard hitting as we’ve all come to expect.
Myself, being a deluded Yank and not feeling like saying something like Canada or South Africa as a lark, I’ll go with North Korea as well. It seems tailor made for what the OP is asking for…if one leaves out the horrible, terrible US of course. And we should, since most posters are from the US on this board or wish they were.
Or we just find it hilarious when folks like you think that life in the US is as bad or worse than life in North Korea. And are serious about that assertion enough to continue to try and defend it.
ETA: And you have obviously never seen how prickly or defensive the North Koreans can be. You should really educate yourself on that country before making even obviously flip and tongue in cheek comments like this, as it makes you look kind of foolish. Not that I don’t doubt you just came in here to bash on the US and were peeved that no one else was going for it.
I never said that, nor do i think it.
I was just asked by what criterion Americans could be worse off than North Koreans, in order to be considered deluded about the greatness of their own country (at least, that’s how I read Czarcasm’s question to me) - incarceration rates are one such. That’s without going into relative body counts etc, when it comes to relative morality.
See, the OP made the mistake of assuming we’re all in agreement about what makes a country a “very terrible places to live in”. Some of us have different standards for what that is.
I have, in fact, seen videos. I stand by what I said about the comparison. Witness the indignant bridling right here…
OK, so maybe America has a higher incarceration rate, statistically.
Does North Korea have right to legal counsel? Relatively well-stocked hospitals? Electricity 24/7? The right to vote in elections that mean something? The right to protest, the right to free speech? Do most North Koreans have access to food? What is the caloric intake per capita in North Korea compared to that of the US? Does North Korea have widespread Internet access? Free press? The right to criticize the government? The right to travel abroad and leave the country? What is the per capita GDP of North Korea compared to that of the US? What is the purchasing power parity of North Korea compared to that of the US? Can North Koreans follow the religion of their choice without fear of persecution? Are Americans required to bow down to statues of Obama, Bush, and Clinton? How many North Koreans own cars? How many different movies, books or television shows does the average North Korean have access to, compared to the average American? How many countries can a North Korean get visa-free access of travel and entry to, compared to the holder of a US passport? What is the life expectancy of the average North Korean? What is the infant mortality rate in North Korea? Do all American men have to serve 10 years of conscription, by law, in the US military? Are a large number of Americans confined to labor camps featuring starvation, torture and summary executions?
[QUOTE=MrDibble]
I was just asked by what criterion Americans could be worse off than North Koreans, in order to be considered deluded about the greatness of their own country (at least, that’s how I read Czarcasm’s question to me) - incarceration rates are one such. That’s without going into relative body counts etc, when it comes to relative morality.
[/QUOTE]
Your answer to the OP was the US, right? And you compared the US to North Korea wrt the OP, saying we’d give them a good run for their money and knowing what the OP was asking…right? And you cherry picked the incarceration thing without any context, as if incarceration in the US is exactly the same as incarceration in North Korea (i.e. the reasons for incarceration are the same, and the conditions of incarceration are the same, etc etc), that the numbers for North Korea (or China) are the same level of certainty as those for the US (i.e. we actually believe the numbers they are giving out as accurate), and so forth.
Then you should know better, basically. Which is the only reason I bothered calling you out on this.
I’ll say Scotland is in with a shout as one of the most blindly nationalist nation’s. Most nationalist movements are forced to mellow when dealing with real life problems and real life decisions. As Scotland is in a Union this mellowing process has not really taken place. Of course only 46% of Scot’s voted for independence, but I’d say many of this 46% are deluded when it comes to the issue of Scotland.
It doesn’t meet the other criteria of the OP though. From this perspective, I would say the US would be in the running and MrDibble correct, but that’s not what the OP is looking for.
Scotland is a developed country with some brilliant places to live in. There is civic pride in their land and people are for most part courteous and civil.
Its not in a condition where to be nationalistic about it, most of the people would have to be brain washed and blinkered.
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