That's his feeling, it is whatever he writes.
Whether it is full of hyperbole or not is not knowable, he'd have to admit to that himself or you'd have to scan his brain.
Some people may understand my initial comment as bashing against the USA. I want to clearly state that I didn't mean that at all. The last sentence was to express that I'm sad to see such things happen and I'll be the first to cheer if the USA can restore what it used to be and I believe it has everything it takes to achieve that.
The potential of the United States is to influence the world from the moral high ground, the last decade have undone the 20 years of building up that image prior to that.
And it will take at least another 20 years (if not more) to fix that.
About 5 years ago I had an opportunity to move to the US, another year ago a fairly well known company wanted to hire me. In both cases I said 'no thanks', in large part due to how the United States has behaved in the recent past.
The potential for greatness is there, but just like with any project execution matters.
There have always been ugly things about the country - just like pretty much every other country, if you dig some.
Not to say people shouldn't point out the defects and work to improve them, just that hand-waviness isn't part of the solution, IMO.
If other forms of social, economic and political injustice take the place of previous abominations, the net result is a state which appears disinterested in positively affecting its ethical standing on the world stage.
The US has had problems going back to when it was founded, and slaves - black people, mostly - were counted as 3/5ths of a human being. That's a sight worse than the stupid airport scanners, or many other modern stupidities in my book. There are plenty of other things to dislike about the place, too, that are not recent.
But plenty of things to like, and every other country has plenty of negatives too, if you look closely.
I disagree with plenty of things in the US, but I'm not so fond of sweeping statements.
How the government treats people that are at its mercy is a pretty good indicator for the state of affairs, and in this respect the USA is not looking too good, to put it mildly.
