Farther up the stack, there is a comment in another thread about people (generally Americans, like myself) who are not at all keen on traveling outside North America. It mentions my position on it, which is "No Bill of Rights? No thanks."

Many of these stories perfectly illustrate why I am not likely to travel to Third World countries. I have been robbed and extorted by police officers in Mexico, I have been beaten by Mexican soldiers and locked in an oven-like armored personnel carrier, I have acquaintances who have been mistreated and threatened by government officials in foreign countries, I have an acquaintance who was set up on a phony drug bust and who spent several years inn the Mexican prison system after being tortured with Diet Coke to obtain his written "confession" (they threatened to throw his terrified girlfriend into a cell full of Mexican prisoners who were screaming and shouting they wanted to fuck her), I have a friend who contracted schistosomiasis and malaria in Africa and had to be hospitalized upon his return, and so on and so forth. People disappear with great regularity in Third World countries. Women get trafficked. No thanks.

The U.S. is far from a perfect place. Nevertheless, it has plenty of things that I have not yet seen to keep me busy.