Well, for one, all the major movies and tv series are American, so they will present any war, conflict, etc, under American viewpoints, to an international audience (including politically naive, historically ignorant and impressionable young ones).

Even when the plot will cast doubt on the legitimacy of the conflict and the actions of the heroes, those will still be the protagonists (and with the humanizing superiority of at least being able to be morally conflicted about their actions), whereas the nuances of the other side are either hidden altogether, or obscured by some "we're all human after all/both sides are equally at fault" message.

Case in point 1:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/nov/14/thriller-ridley...

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hollywood-cia-washingto...

Or e.g.:

https://www.vox.com/2014/6/16/5814270/the-successful-70-year...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ve-day-70th-...

I had the same experience being from and growing in Poland.

I think I can give you a simple reason: Hollywood. Through movies and TV shows, America has been defining the mass culture for the past few decades, for almost the entire world.

This is very deliberate. From 1911 to 2017, 800+ films and 1100+ television shows have received backing from the Pentagon and the CIA [1]. Several films received major script changes, primarily to create a certain perception of the US military and intelligence agencies.

[1] https://theconversation.com/washington-dcs-role-behind-the-s...

As did Jackson Pollock [1] and other artists ...

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-...

That's an interesting link you have there, but it feels like limited hangout. "Yeah we admit we routinely manipulated film and more, but only to paint ourselves in a favorable light."

>I think I can give you a simple reason: Hollywood. Through movies and TV shows, America has been defining the mass culture for the past few decades, for almost the entire world.

I think this can conflate cause/effect. Hollywood creates these movies and stories because the people producing them believe the narrative.

It's interesting to me which narratives are questioned, and which aren't. The Vietnam War is widely considered controversial, but World War 2 was about defeating the evil Nazis, period, right? Adam Curtis has some interesting interviews with soldiers in The Living Dead about this topic; often the men on the ground couldn't tell good from bad.

The issue isn't about Americans believing America is exceptional. Every nation believes themselves to be the protagonists. The difference between the US and everyone else is that the US managed to export its movies to the point they became an integral part of culture of half of the world. In any western nation X, for the past decades, you only had two categories of movies of importance: local movies, and American movies. And usually the latter were better / more interesting.

Yet in reality British colonialism was, being equal to other european countries colonialism (France, Spain, Portugal, Dutch, Belgium, Germany a bit), one of the greatest evils in mankind's history, probably the worst if you count all direct and indirect casualties. I would be properly ashamed of my ancestors if I was from one of the countries, yet people simply don't give a nanofraction of a fuck.

Much of the mess we are facing in last 20th century till now is due to that. Countries literally raped for centuries, all their wealth stolen. Generations raised as servants to powerful overlords. Promoting more submissive minorities into ruling classes. Afterwards some idiots in their tea club draw semi-random lines on the maps when creating new countries, creating perfect storm for future conflicts.

And what we have today? Colonialism with a modern face - continuous brain drain so that only poor uneducated or lazy stay in their home country. And of course resource drain never stopped, look at companies like Royal Dutch Shell or DeBeers and many, many others.

> I would be properly ashamed of my ancestors if I was from one of the countries, yet people simply don't give a nanofraction of a fuck.

I think it’s pretty obvious why people aren’t ashamed. Because they didn’t do the act. Take your expectation of shame to it’s conclusion: It’s very selective to only call out European colonialist countries as being ones where shame should be expected. If we are looking at crimes across history everyone on the planet must end up ashamed of their ancestry as there are few innocents. Not like the current borders and genetic make up of countries in Europe has been static throughout history, let alone every other plot of land in the world.

It is important to learn from history, but assigning blame on the living -- yourself or others -- for what dead people did is a certain path for repeating many of those same historical mistakes.