Oh well, another “Susanita” argument.
[Changed from a post I made before about the pitiful way the Trump admin responded to the Corona Virus:]
A long time ago I pointed to that kind of argument that looks at the worst in others to minimize the gross and bad things happening in the USA as a “Susanita argument”
One very famous Latin American cartoonist, Quino (RIP this year 
), had a comic strip called Mafalda. Where Susanita (a very rich and conservative girl) told Mafalda that she always looked at news and reports about what the very bad people were doing to others in other places in the world. So she felt glad and good living in Argentina (While the dirty war was going on, but that was another history).
The point Mafalda made (actually what the great cartoonist Quino say) was:
“That is not good Susanita, you have to compare to others that are better than you, not with the ones that are worse so one can become a better person”
(I’m paraphrasing there), and then Susanita said to Mafalda:
“C’mon! who would do such a dirty move to oneself!”
And the moral of the strip was very clear, Susanita was the one with the dumb point, it is not good to look at the worst nations and come with your country’s shortcomings as mostly inconsequential by that comparison. We should be looking at what are the best efforts of other nations or to consider ideas like ending the war on drugs that would solve or minimize a lot of violence or incarcerations in the US; of course, many conservatives think that looking at better efforts or solutions is nasty or bad reporting.