I strongly beg to disagree. I assume that you're from Finland based on your profile information- so I can imagine a couple of reasons why you romanticize America [either that or you may possibly be an American].
However, coming from a Russian perspective, I believe that Americans were the bad guys in the Cold War and many other cases in history [communism was a failed experiment and inadvertently led to much pain and suffering for millions of people, but there was much suffering, bloodshed, and injustice on both sides.]. Principally because of the philosophical positions of both sides. The Soviet Union pretended to strive for the ideals of equality [economic and racial] and brotherhood. The United States pretended to strive for the ideals of freedom and individualism. In my value system [political and philosophical debates often break down to opposing value systems], there's more truth, beauty, and justice in the ideals of equality and collectivism [obligations and sacrifices for one another] than the ideals of freedom and individualism [which I believe to be intellectualized expressions of egotism].
The worst crimes of the modern era:
- 400 years of slavery
- genocide of Native Americans
- Nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- carpet-bombing and agent orange on Southeast Asia
How can the US be the good guy of the world when the country was one of the last countries in the world to abandon slavery?
That colors more than 75% of America's existence by the way.
Enter the second half of the 20th century and you have America in a geopolitical contest against the Soviet Union.
A century after being one of the last countries to abandon slavery, America finds itself on the side of European imperialists while the Soviet Union transcends racial philosophy and strives to materialize the fantasy of Utopian egalitarianism where all people are financially secure and equal despite racial background.
America's ideological export?
The freedom and individual expression to tattoo your own dick.