"But the way these comparisons are so often framed reveals something more troubling than confusion. When people say, “This isn’t Iran. This isn’t who we are,” what they are really saying is: This kind of violence belongs to other people. Other countries. Other kinds of societies. "This way of talking treats repression and state terror as natural features of non-Western life — tragic, perhaps, but expected — while preserving the fantasy that the United States is fundamentally different: a country that insists on seeing itself as innocent and as the world’s savior. "This alibi does two kinds of damage at once." https://truthout.org/articles/this-is-not-america-is-the-most-dangerous-lie-we-keep-telling-ourselves/