No, it’s just apples and oranges. The USA is a flawed constitutional republic that runs on a messy democratic process. It’s ugly sometimes, but it’s fundamentally good.
The US CIA runs a global secret network of unaccountable torture prisons.
When the US congress tried to investigate them, the CIA compromised the congressional computers to avoid oversight of their torture programs, then lied about compromising them.
The US military conducts bulk espionage on everyone inside the country, in violation of the country's own basic law.
The differences aren't quite as stark as you think.
I also believe that if you ask the average Chinese or Russian person (the US bogeymen of the season) they would also believe that their country is fundamentally good.
It turns out humans everywhere are fundamentally good, and governments everywhere tend toward illegal and oppressive authoritatianism, given enough time to gather resources, size, and fear.
To be fair, the parent was not comparing those governments from a democracy standpoint, but was comparing their actions. Surely the Chinese government is currently more oppressive to its own population than the USG is, but it is also doubtlessly less oppressive to foreign populations, which may suggests that they differ in circumstances more than in essence and maybe why the parent equated them?
The US is an anti-majoritarian country of the elites that has enough advertising to convince people that they feel free while the elites control every aspect of their lives. While there are levels to this, it would be a huge mistake to regard this place as fundamentally good outside of a few sentences snipped from the declaration of independence.
I think we can consistently predict they’ll go after what’s financially best for them, but they won’t collaborate with nation states in quite this way.
