I try to recognize similarities in systems, and I am more intimately familiar with US government than any other, so a lot of my political theory starts with identifying US patterns and trying to find similar examples. If I can find similarities, I try to identify them along with differences to sketch out a general hypothesis of what the pattern actually is. I do try to identify and account for American peculiarities, though it's not always easy. Like, I think America's gun culture is unique in the world, maybe in history, and it infects fucking everything in the US in ways that don't have good analogs in other countries. There are lots of eccentricities like this but gun culture is one of the big ones.

I think confusing those eccentricities for part of the common pattern, either in ignorance or malice, are projecting. So it's possible that I am projecting without realizing it. It has happened before.

But I really don't think the US is the only nation on Earth that weaponizes and exploits Brand Loyalty. That I am pretty confident about. I'd go so far as to say every nation creates a Brand of itself, though most people use the term "national identity". Governments abuse it for the same reason corporations do: it makes people feel like they're part of the team, even if they're not.