Or are cynical Americans living in an alternate world, blind to how much better the rule of law is here than most other countries? The commenter's comparison was to Russia. When was the last time Putin lost an election?

I'd say we're slightly behind western Europe as far as rule of law goes, not really sure about the advanced east (Japan, Korea), and miles ahead of just about everywhere else (eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, China, etc). Yes, even with Trump in office, though he really makes me worry.

I mean, the sitting President was shilling cars on the White House lawn and runs an active meme coin bribery slush fund.

This is not slightly behind Western Europe. This is miles behind any developed country. China may be corrupt, but Xi Jinping hasn’t yet sold beans or cars via press conference.

The rule of law gets down to nitty-gritty levels, too, not just a reality show at the highest altitudes: trust the police don't extort you, the ability to gain relief in court (small claims or civil), trust things you build won't be looted overnight, trust in your neighborhood to walk at night or leave something unlocked, trust in your bank to wire things, trust in your title companies, trust in your package deliveries, etc.

It's not perfect, but you could do so, so much worse.

"Could be much worse" is a platitude not an argument. "It is improving" might be, if it were true.

I often couch my arguments in soft language like a conversation would be in order to have a discussion. The idea that the US is miles behind developed nations is nonsense.

Depends. Would you still insist it's nonsense if any of these things you mentioned happened to you or your family?

Why are these alternatives? I believe it is true that the situation in the US is better than many other countries (not most), and also that "almost no corruption" is false.

Being better than others really isn't the only thing that matters.

If you pursue excellence, you compare yourself against the best, not the worst.

Then the russian fellow shouldn't have dared to compare USA to his country?

No, he's saying that people respect the law, which they do. It's all about finding loopholes, and sticking to the letter of the law while working around the law to do whatever the law prohibits but doing it in a way that remains legal. This entire situation came up because of loopholes. A great way to offshore money was to spend it on software developed by overseas subsidiaries.

If you’ve never lived outside the US you have zero idea how bad it gets. It literally is an alternate world.

The amount of daily activities in the US that just work 99.999999% of the time that would have a corruption aspect in some other countries is mind boggling.

The closest analogy I can come up with is imagine if every money transaction involved cash tipping the parties involved. And that’s just the beginning.

Like tipping the licensing agent every time you had to renew your driver’s license or get plates. Or tipping the judge for a favorable judgement.

A growing number of activities in the US require tipping, so it's getting there.