Terrible sorry, old chap, but whatever reality your using isn't quite the same as the reality on the ground.  To begin, choosing to use North Korea and Zimbabwe as reference points is truly asinine.  The US cannot be the most repugnant because these are much more repugnant?  Are you getting to grips with what your uttering?

What you should be saying is the US is the most shinning because it shines brighter than...  I'll leave you to select those nations that best represent your notion of shining.

Instead, you choose to argue that in a bowl of shit, your shit is the least smelly.  Is that the best you can do?

The United States of America (oxymoron rears its ugly head here) cannot be the most repugnant nation on Earth because North Korea, Zimbabwe, and Pakistan are all worse?  Guess the US is just the *fourth* most repugnant nation on Earth.  Wow!  What an accolade.  Good job expat, you've made the point perfectly.

Hello,
  not really - I struck off places like Haiti as being repugnant in the absolute and abject sense of probably being the worst place to live in the Western Hemisphere. Also struck off a few former Soviet Republics, where traditional values includes such shining lights as Stalin and Tamerlane. Zimbabwe was picked because it has nothing to do with the West, but there are entire regions like the Congo (does that area even have an official name /state boundaries anymore?) which are obviously repugnant in terms of low grade genocide. I also left off places like Myanmar or Libya.

But I left these off (there are more), because most of them are part of a larger picture, which is how the rich live off the poor. And there, really, the U.S. is not somehow uniquely repugnant either. It may be the biggest pig at the trough, but it is only one of many.

When complaining about the U.S., and there is a lot to complain about, sticking to some basic facts and perspectives is helpful in having a discussion.

But if it helps anyone - that America is the nation which seems to have fallen the farthest from its own self-proclaimed lofty ideals in the last 10 years, while in the eyes of many becoming a mockery of itself on what seems to be an unstoppable path to evil is certainly the sort of description I would wholeheartedly agree to, simply 'not most repugnant.' Most Americans seem really unaware how far America still has to fall before joining the true bottom ranks. They also seem unaware of how many mechanisms are already in place to make sure that stopping it is considered beyond practicality. Notice that the president can now declare a 'special event of national significance' anywhere in the U.S., for a tiny example (so much for peaceful assembly to petition for redress) - and while massive  wiretapping has been going on for years, it is only recently that the technology has allowed automation to work effectively enough - tied in with the huge amount of data stored, since Americans seem to have allowed databases to be filled over the last couple of decades of a style which a German planner facing numerous political goals in 1934 could only dream of. (Again, not a direct comparison - the German planner did have genealogical records which are still not normal in the U.S., for example - but in 1934, hardcore communists/Stalinists, various religious groups, and a number of militant unions/workers were still in fairly active opposition to the Nazis takeover, and were still considered a threat facing the new regime.) Having a tool to wield tends to be the first step in wielding it in the world of cause and effect - and notice I haven't said who or which political belief will wield it, only that it is hard to imagine it won't be. As an interesting side note - the recent demonstrations of people many seem to consider 'illegal' could be a fine way to test many aspects of a system designed to ensure that 100,000s of people could be placed in confinement (wonder how the camp construction is going? - bet Cheney knows who to call to find out, don't you?), since they are considered a threat to American society. And from most of what I have been reading, a majority of 'real' Americans would be pleased to see it happen, if only to defend America from a wave of unAmericanness, or something equally hard for me to understand. Yes, a certain mixture is starting to stir itself, and I doubt people are worried enough about what it means. Sort of like pointing out how databases being set up in the 1980s were a first step in people trading away privacy - these days, an entire system is in place to notice 'suspicious' transactions in the entire banking/retail network, and essentially no one can live without a credit card, it seems.

I don't live there now, but from here, what is stirring is a truly vile mixture of racism wrapped in righteousness about legality and respecting America. Almost as if after 40 years of being kept under a rock, a certain ugly creature has finally found the lever to pry itself back into the light, where many people seem entranced by its pure blackness, and wish it to grow larger and more devouring.

Maybe I am wrong, but a lot worries me about what is going on in the U.S.

But as noted, a few nukes getting legal field testing in Iran (wouldn't want to break any treaties and test them illegally here first, right?) would make this a more complicated discussion. But honestly, even after nuking a few Iranian targets, I still would argue North Korea is worse.