Every article she writes seems to promote the idea that foreigners are fundamentally corrupt and Americans are fundamentally fair. Reading her articles takes me back to my youth in the cub scouts reading about what a virtuous nation this is, replete with pictures of clean cut sagacious white people shaking hands with smiling, grateful and childlike foreigners and ethnic minorities.

The differences between the American and the Chinese (and Russian) systems of government is most easily explained from our different economic composition. The people in power in China have government positions. The people in power in the US are the capitalists who can afford to work from behind the scenes.

To support this I submit two considerations - first, despite all the sensational stories regarding Russian and Chinese neuvo-billionaires that are continually getting air time in our fair broadcast stations, the US is much, much more economically stratified than either of those places.

Second, I don't know remember the size of Obama's war chest, but it was huge, and despite intimations to the opposite, it mostly came from a very few rich people. I'm certain at least the seeds of that fund did at least. And this despite the fact that Obama was notorious for never enunciating a single salient position. Not on health care, not on taxes, nothing.

Yes, the Russians and Chinese governments are not democratic. These countries are ruled by and for an elite. But what are we? Some fricken monument to democracy?

I echo your sentiments exactly, this author has no idea what she's talking about. I think Obama won fair and square, but there's no need to project issues onto other countries. This is 2009, I think we can do without another xenophobic writer (she might as well as have called China and Russia "Reds").

" the US is much, much more economically stratified than either of those places." You obviously haven't spent much time in China.

After looking at the US's position on the GINI index, I stand corrected. Congratulations - China just passed us with regards to income disparity. Regardless, we're much closer to countries like Brazil than countries like Norway.

Wrolph:

The differences between the American and the Chinese (and Russian) systems of government is most easily explained from our different economic composition. The people in power in China have government positions. The people in power in the US are the capitalists who can afford to work from behind the scenes.

Bullshit. The difference can most easily explained by the fact that you, I, or anyone else in the U.S. or Western Europe can post comments like these to the Net without the slightest fear of retribution, while a "citizen" - that is, slave - of China or Russia would be facing jail or worse (and of course the comments would be censored anyway).

How many of Bush's or Blair's domestic critics, or critics of western corporate leadership, for that matter, have ended up in hospitals in Moscow or Tehran or Pyongyang with doctors trying to figure out how the hell they got exposed to so much polonium? How many peaceful demonstrators have been shot or run over by tanks?

It is true that Ms. Applebaum spends a lot more pixels on oppressive regimes like China's and Russia's than on more enlightened parts of the world or even on ordinary citizens in the unfree world, but that's always been her specialty and I don't think she's ever attempted to suggest otherwise.

I agree that there is more individual freedom in the US than in Russia or China, my argument is that this is not due to our respective innate natures as Applebaum intimates, but due to the fact that we are rich and they are poor. A state that is rich and secure can afford to have a few of it's citizens popping off at the mouth, as long as they are securely marginalized by a press that is owned and operated by those interests in control of the country.

They ugly truth is that if China failed to repress it's people, you would have anarchy, which would spiral back into more poverty.

Someone once said that every nation is 3 meals away from revolution. Once that fear subsides with the Chinese rulers, they can create a crypto-democracy like Russia and the US and the rest of the civilized world has.

I thought simpleminded economic determinism went on the ash heap of history along with the rest of Marxism in 1989-91. Apparently one of us is mistaken.

Anyway, I though inequality, not poverty, was the great bugaboo that supposedly makes the U.S. such a terrible place. And for the record, would you care to contrast the per capita GDP and policies toward free speech of Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and your example of Russia? Hint: Russia is *not* a poor country.

The US is not a terrible place - if it were, why would so much of the world be willing to sell their own mother's to get here.

My point (not a controversial one I think) is that poverty (left on it's own to foment) begets instability, and that stability begets wealth - ergo, totalitarianism has it's place.

We Americans are fat and happy, and we can afford to sit around and amuse ourselves by making witty observations about the nature of men that would get us castrated in poorer, more desperate and more politically nervous areas of the world (like Alabama ;-) )

Your point about Saudi Arabia is valid though. It's more than wealth that stabilizes countries - there's also a political dimension. New Zealand and Denmark are not nearly as rich as we are, but nobody gives a toss what they say, so as a result they enjoy great personal liberties.