>>> We in the west are supposed to be better, but all we are better at really is PR.
That's baloney, also known as reverse cargo cult. As you know, cargo cult is a fallacy when people simulate external appearances of some process without actually performing it (original cargo cult was building fake airfields and simulating actions of the people working in airfield in hope that actual planes with plentiful food and goods - i.e. cargo - would arrive) and without understanding what exactly causes the external effects. Reverse cargo cult happens when people postulate that there actually were no actual planes ever, just those people that claimed they fly the planes are much better at pretending (or, as you say now, in PR) than the cargo cult practitioners, thus they appear to have more success, even though under the pretense there's no actual essence in either case, and the essence doesn't actually exist and is just a lie.
Of course, it is trivially obvious to any informed person that while we have major undeniable problems with surveillance running amok and other serious problems in the US, situation with personal rights and liberties in the US is way better than in Russia. In US there are no things like Khodorkovsky's or Magnitsky's affairs, there are no laws introducing internet censorship, there is Bill of Rights, there are independent courts, there is a free press, there is the police that mostly is doing its job and not racketeering businesses, and I could continue all day long. Yes, abuses do happen, and yes, they are bad, and yes, right now we are living through a number of them and US citizens need to fix them if they want to preserve their liberties - but claiming "all we are better at really is PR" is misguided at best and playing right to the hands of dictators like Putin and Assad at worst. After all, if everybody is only pretending, why should Putin or Assad change anything? They just has to lie more and better and everything would be fine.