I grew up in Eastern Europe. For 90% of people there at the time, US = paradise. Maybe it was propaganda, I don't know. Later in life I got travel a lot and meet a lot of Americans and for most, their moral and ethics are at the exact opposite of what the US is showing now.
In the former Yugoslavia maybe. But in the former USSR and Warsaw Pact countries, that isn’t even remotely true. The US was critical in supporting anti-USSR resistance, either directly with money or symbolically (“Tear down this wall”)
The image of the good guy USA had (at least in eastern Europe) has less to do with how they treated other countries and more with how they treated their own citizens.
It doesn't have to be a paradise in absolute terms to be a significantly better place. EE to the US was definitely an improvement for a very long time. Even if many other places already didn't see the US as good guys.
