Despite its problems, the United States of America is still the best. Thing. Ever

There are not that many things I find more irritating than Europeans getting on their high horses about America and the subject of race, violence and inequality. Everyone seems to have an opinion about the shooting of Michael Brown, most of which contradict what the actual witnesses and forensic evidence showed in the grand jury hearing; among these are a French government minister, who felt able to distract herself from her own country’s miseries, and Paris’s increasing resemblance to a toilet at a third division football ground.

It’s partly America’s fault that it has told its own narrative to the world so well, including its racial struggle, and that this is cited by its enemies around the world. Almost everyone has seen footage of cops beating black civil rights protesters in the south; few people know or care that in France’s capital that same decade 200 Algerian protesters were simply gunned