ERIC ZUESSE—A recent poll of Americans showed that “74% think America is a dictatorship; only 21% think it’s not.” Perhaps Americans are more realistic about the government than about the ‘news’ media. Although one can reasonably debate the degree to which any nation is a democracy, the United States certainly stands rather low on that factor, and stands well below China, and perhaps is lower than Russia, but none of these countries is among the world’s worst — except, perhaps, the U.S., for its having the highest percentage of its people in prison.