The American exceptionalism bit is weird here. (Also you’re not American so shouldn’t have been indoctrinated in that.)
This might be a hint that it’s not all indoctrination? This is kind of a tangent, but I continue to be dismayed by the degree to which so many people have tacitly flattened political and moral goodness to “America bad”, or even “America unexceptional” in the age of Trump and the GWT.
The US has made some serious mistakes, and (especially lately, but not only because of Trump) strayed from the shining beacon of classical liberal principles that made it great, but I don’t know any other country or culture that comes close to replacing us as a standard bearer.
There are individual European leaders who are more competent, ethical, and principled than Trump, but the European project as a whole has gone off-the-rails in various ways. (I don’t think you have to accept @Richard_Ngo’s entire worldview to acknowledge this.)
Beyond Europe, I think it is important to acknowledge that there is a hierarchy of evil and goodness in the world, and grappling with this hierarchy is a central prerequisite to making sense of politics. There are multiple dimensions and considerations that people will have deep and genuine disagreements over, but as a starting point, I think it is important to take into account a power / faction’s ideals and principles (stated and revealed), how well individual leaders live up to those principles, and the actual consequences and impact that each faction has had (or is likely to have) on the world, taking into account second-order effects and counterfactuals (i.e. avoiding naive consequentialism).
So you can line up the IRGC, Kim Jong Un, Putin, the CCP, the Chavistas, the US (or various factions within it), Israel, Western Europe, etc. in this hierarchy, and not everyone will agree on the exact place of everyone in the line or even what the dimensions / criteria should be, but I claim (a) there will probably be some common and important patterns that align imperfectly with standard ideological / political factions and (b) this will get closer to the heart of actual political disagreements than arguing narrowly about whether the first-order consequences of historical colonialism or revolutions were good on net or not.
This might be a hint that it’s not all indoctrination? This is kind of a tangent, but I continue to be dismayed by the degree to which so many people have tacitly flattened political and moral goodness to “America bad”, or even “America unexceptional” in the age of Trump and the GWT.
The US has made some serious mistakes, and (especially lately, but not only because of Trump) strayed from the shining beacon of classical liberal principles that made it great, but I don’t know any other country or culture that comes close to replacing us as a standard bearer.
There are individual European leaders who are more competent, ethical, and principled than Trump, but the European project as a whole has gone off-the-rails in various ways. (I don’t think you have to accept @Richard_Ngo’s entire worldview to acknowledge this.)
Beyond Europe, I think it is important to acknowledge that there is a hierarchy of evil and goodness in the world, and grappling with this hierarchy is a central prerequisite to making sense of politics. There are multiple dimensions and considerations that people will have deep and genuine disagreements over, but as a starting point, I think it is important to take into account a power / faction’s ideals and principles (stated and revealed), how well individual leaders live up to those principles, and the actual consequences and impact that each faction has had (or is likely to have) on the world, taking into account second-order effects and counterfactuals (i.e. avoiding naive consequentialism).
So you can line up the IRGC, Kim Jong Un, Putin, the CCP, the Chavistas, the US (or various factions within it), Israel, Western Europe, etc. in this hierarchy, and not everyone will agree on the exact place of everyone in the line or even what the dimensions / criteria should be, but I claim (a) there will probably be some common and important patterns that align imperfectly with standard ideological / political factions and (b) this will get closer to the heart of actual political disagreements than arguing narrowly about whether the first-order consequences of historical colonialism or revolutions were good on net or not.