5 Ways The U.S. Is Awful (But Other Countries Are Way Worse)

Let's be honest here: One of the scariest things about the United States right now is that we're teetering on the brink of letting Donald Trump run the country. I agree that's a genuinely terrifying prospect that implies a lot of awful things about us as a nation, but on the bright side, at least we didn't just elect Rodrigo Duterte.

If the name doesn't ring a bell: He's the newly crowned president of the Philippines, and his exploits are so insane that, initially, this entire article was just going to be about him. Unfortunately, in the time between when I came up with that plan and when I finally started writing, John Oliver, the host of HBO's Last Week Tonight, talked about Duterte in one of those 90-minute-long monologues that have rightfully made his show so popular.

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So, not wanting to hear your shit about "stealing" ideas (it's called parallel thinking, motherfuckers), I decided to expand on my initial premise a bit. That said, Rodrigo Duterte is wacky enough that he still merits a mention here, even if only to prepare for the possibility that not everyone reading this gets 100 percent of their information from premium cable shows. Let's get to it!

Maybe it's because our hopefully not-soon-to be president shrugged off all those Hitler comparisons like he was Action Bronson blowing off questions about having the same voice as Ghostface Killah ...

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Everyone gets that reference, right?

... but these days comparing someone to Trump seems just as worthy of an immediate "Come on, they can't be that bad" kind of reply. Rest assured, this is a comparison Rodrigo Duterte absolutely deserves. If anything, Trump hasn't done enough to warrant being compared to a maniac like Duterte.

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Yet.

For example, remember when Trump implied that Mexican immigrants are rapists? Shitty indeed, but it's at least moderately less heinous than publicly wishing you'd had a chance to participate in a rape. Here's an actual quote from the new president of the Philippines regarding the 1989 rape and murder of a Christian missionary that happened in Davao City, where he served as mayor for years before ascending to the lead job:

"I was angry she was raped, yes, that was one thing. But she was so beautiful, I think the mayor should have been first. What a waste."

Pretty damn crazy, yeah? Incredibly enough, it sort of pales in comparison to his history of fighting crime during his time as mayor, and the things he promises to do in that capacity as president. To put it as succinctly as possible -- Rodrigo Duterte murders criminals.

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And his constituents love him for it.

In the name of reducing a skyrocketing crime rate in the late-'80s, Duterte coupled his tough talk on outlaws with local vigilante squads that had formed in response to the same problem. According to countless reports and investigations by human rights organizations, these collaborations eventually evolved into full-on death squads that operated at the behest of the mayor himself. During his time in office, thousands of alleged criminals were murdered with no suspects ever charged for the crimes or even identified at all. He's never been tied to any of the murders, but when asked about rumors that he'd personally executed 700 criminals, he replied that the number was closer to 1,700. We're not just talking rapists and murderers, either. Thieves, drug dealers, drug users, and anyone else who dared to live outside the law were potential targets. There's no trial. There's no chance for reform. You're just murdered in the street. It should go without saying that sometimes innocent people died after being mistaken for a criminal whose name was on a kill list.

Even worse, Duterte promised to bring this somewhat controversial approach to crime fighting to the entire country as president, vowing at one point during his campaign that he'd kill 100,000 criminals and dump them in Manila Bay.

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Such a pretty place to be brutally murdered.

Oh, and he promised to do this during his first six months in office. I know that sounds implausible, but it's worth noting that his stance on crime made him wildly popular with the residents of Davao City. The people of the Philippines know this man's history and voted him into office, at least in part because of that history. It's not out of the question that his election will be taken as a clear sign that voters really do want to see 100,000 people murdered and dumped in the water. The Philippines, for all intents and purposes, just voted for extrajudicial killing as their preferred method of justice, and they may very well get it.

Trump is certainly a character, but I don't think anyone's expecting him to outright order the murders of hundreds of thousands of citizens immediately upon seizing office. So we have that going for us as a country, even if the fact that Duterte managed to win just makes the idea of a Trump presidency seem all the more realistic.

Remember when we argued and fought all those years for universal healthcare and finally got ... something sort of like it? That was fun, huh? During the constant back-and-forth debates that erupted over the issue, those in favor of free medicine for all would regularly hold up countries like Canada and England as shining examples of how we can, in fact, take care of people who can't afford it without bringing all of the nation's hospitals crashing to the ground like steel beams exposed to the roaring fire produced by burning jet fuel.

Well, if a recent report from the Office For Economic Cooperation And Development is any indication, we might have been wrong. According to their findings, among developed nations the United Kingdom has one of the worst healthcare systems in the world.

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I bet it's not as bad as the food.

As it turns out, keeping a universal healthcare system afloat requires a lot of money, and that's apparently something the National Health Service, the government agency responsible for keeping citizens there in working bodies, doesn't have a lot of at the moment. This probably goes a long way toward explaining why, according to the OECD report, an estimated 75,000 additional doctors and nurses are needed to get service levels in the U.K. back on track. As of right now, those levels have fallen below those of countries like Turkey, Portugal, and Poland.

Poland! Have you fucking seen Poland recently?

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I think this is fairly representative of what the country looks like.

I certainly haven't, because everything I've ever heard about that place makes it seem awful. Like how the OECD used it in their report as a comparison to drive home the point that healthcare in the U.K. is a nightmare, for example.

Anyway, back to the U.K. Things are so bad an entire one-third of the healthcare professionals there have threatened permanent strikes and mass resignations over proposed changes to their government contracts that could amount to a pay cut of as much as 30 percent for some. Which is a lot when you take into account that doctors in the U.K. don't exactly make what we in the U.S. would think of as "doctor money." A starting junior doctor makes around $33,000 a year, a figure that looks all the more depressing when converted to the proper currency.

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Damn.

So, while it's true we still haven't gotten that single-payer healthcare system of our dreams yet, at least take heart knowing we can still afford to pay our plastic surgeons and prescription drug dealers way more than they probably deserve.

Also, you'd stand a really great chance of being murdered as a result of the words you write. Journalism is such a dangerous profession in Russia there's actually a national day of remembrance every December for journalists killed in the line of duty. The exact number of journalists murdered in Russia as a direct result of their work isn't known, but monitoring groups suspect the total is anywhere between 50 and 220, and that figure only covers as far back as the start of the Boris Yeltsin era (1991).

As recently as 2009, Russia was named the third-most-dangerous country in the world for journalists, trailing only Iraq and Algeria.

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Iraq! Have you seen that place lately? If not, it looks a lot like this picture of Poland.

Keep in mind, we're not talking conspiracy theory stuff where these people are dying in car accidents but we assume it's murder anyway. No, these are usually shootings, and they often involve high-profile opponents of the policies of the Russian government.

One of the most famous cases was the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, an activist and writer who was openly against Russia's second war with Chechnya and the policies of President Vladimir Putin in general. She was found dead in the elevator of her apartment building after being shot five times, including once at point-blank range in the head. Some of the assailants were tracked down eventually, but the person who ordered the contract killing was never identified. There were rumors that it was a Russian politician.

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Not that it means anything, but she was murdered on Vladimir Putin's birthday.

An even crazier thing to consider is that the Anna Politkovskaya murder is an example of Russia being subtle and low-key about killing a journalist. The murder of blogger Magomed Yevloyev was the exact opposite. He ran a website that was critical of certain factions of the government. One day, after landing in the Ingushetia region of Russia, where he lived, from a trip to Moscow, he was met by Russian police, who tossed him in a car, drove away, and shot him in the temple right there in the back seat. They claimed the gun went off accidentally. Yes, just like in Pulp Fiction. They also tossed his lifeless body out of the car in front of a hospital and just kept on driving.

Say whatever else you want about the United States government, but if we're killing a journalist, you can damn sure bet we'd at least have the decency to be a little more secretive about it.

To put it mildly, guns are a huge problem in the United States, mainly because we use them to kill each other on an alarmingly regular basis. However, even with that worked into the equation, when it comes to statistics, the truth is we're way behind a slew of other countries when it comes to gun violence. I'd say that's reason to celebrate, but that would make for a really grim party, seeing as how we'd be whooping it up over the fact that some countries are plagued by more senseless violence than we are.

I'm sure more than a few trivia buffs are on the brink of giving up on this article altogether so they can Google which country does lead the way in gun murders. My apologies for the suspense; let me make it up to you by saving you a search. It's Honduras.

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Congrats!

Is anyone surprised by that? Perhaps it's just my complete and total lack of knowledge about Honduras, but I was sure the "winner" would be Mexico, for no other reason than they're so conveniently located near this massive stockpile of firearms we lovingly refer to as America. I was wrong. Thanks to out-of-control gang and drug activity, the relatively tiny country (compared to us, anyway) of Honduras sports the highest murder rate in all the world, with 68.43 homicides by firearm per 100,000 people.

See? You feel better about all the guns we have now, right? Or no? Tell me in the comments! Oh, and since you guys brought up Mexico.

It's a topic that's been covered by a lot of news outlets, actually; I picked that particular article to link to because of the story it opens with.

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Any chance it's a lighthearted telenovela?

While traveling in Mexico, a woman and three male colleagues were apprehended by police, stripped naked, and tortured for hours. What makes the story especially striking is that the four weren't just unlucky travelers ... they were federal agents investigating a recent outbreak of disappearances in the area. The local police who abducted the group and subsequently turned them over to a drug cartel were fully aware of who they'd taken into custody and potentially sent to their deaths. That's why they kidnapped them in the first place. They answer to the cartels, not federal authorities.

Go ahead, try to imagine that happening here. The FBI rolls into town to investigate a crime and the local police kidnap them and hand them over to drug dealers. It's damn near inconceivable, but shit like that happens all the time in Mexico.

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But also this sometimes!

Yes, our police have been responsible for doing some truly heinous thing to the people they're supposed to be protecting, but again, put yourself into imagination mode and try to picture a scenario where police in this country would be comfortable attempting something like the mass kidnapping that happened in the Mexican city of Iguala in 2014.

In that incident, according to eyewitness accounts, 43 students from a nearby college were taken into custody by local police for reasons that still aren't completely clear to this day. There also isn't a whole lot of information about what happened next. The prevailing theory is that they were handed over to a local crime syndicate called Guerreros Unidos (United Warriors) and promptly killed. Whatever the case, they were never seen alive again.

Hell, try to even picture this happening in the United States ...

... without the residents of the city where it went down taking to the streets to violently protest. For those who don't have time to watch, it's secretly recorded video footage of an American tourist being shaken down for literally all the money in his wallet by a police officer in Mexico during a routine traffic stop.

The crooked cop initially asks for 6,000 pesos, but eventually just settles for whatever he can get instead. It's an outrage-inspiring bit of video, but when you take into account that it just as easily could've ended with the driver getting tossed in the back of a drug cartel van and disappeared forever, it might as well be a romantic comedy.

Adam has lots of fun things happening soon, and you can be a part of them all! He'll be telling jokes at The Roar Room in Glendale, California, this Sunday (5/21) with a whole bunch of other funny people. It's a free show that you should totally attend if you're in the area. Go here for more details. If you're the Midwest type, you can catch him telling even more jokes at North Bar in Chicago on June 25th with Jeff May and Cracked legends Tom Reimann and Alex Schmidt. Tickets are just $10 and you can get them right here. If nothing else, you can follow him on Twitter @adamtodbrown and follow his goddamn fantastic podcast on Instagram @Unpops.Podcast. That'll do for now! Thanks!