Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was definitely an air of superiority of American pilots. The problem is that there is a grain of truth to it. A big part of this is that the American Airforce train a huge number of pilots to an incredibly high standard who eventually leave the military and become civilian pilots. Any pilot who isn't naturally gifted in the art of flying an aeroplane will be flunked before finishing their training. They are tes…
So, do you know as a fact that plots in other countries are less passionate or have less training? It would be interesting if you have a source of how many civilian pilots are ex-military pilots, as an non-expert I would say that having experience with a fighter plane is not better then having same hours of experience with a civilian plane, it is not like fighter plane experience is much better then other planes when…
Option C: crew resource management and by extension culture. Take a look at one of (if not the) worst aviation wrecks in history: the Tenerife disaster. A Dutch 747 (KLM) and American 747 (PanAm) collided and became engulfed in a gigantic fireball. The biggest factor was that nobody was willing to speak up or acknowledge in either cockpit that there was uncertainty and an unsafe situation. Yes these are two western countries, but after the wreck western aviation culture changed dramatically as a significant emphasis was put on what amounts to "see something? say something!!" (a.k.a. crew resource management, CRM).
CRM has been very slow to trickle down to, for instance, East Asian airlines where deference to authority has a much stronger hold. Take a look at the Asiana wreck at SFO. Two pilots in the cockpit were repeatedly calling out significant mistakes, but the pilot flying ignored them. Neither of the other pilots took control of the situation and the plane was flown straight into the ground.
Training, as well, seems to be something American pilots are pretty prickly about. After a Continental regional airline (Colgan Air) wrecked the solution was deemed to be requiring more pilot training (despite the fact that experience was NOT the problem in this crash). For all the belly aching about the guy in the left set of the Ethiopian Air jet having only a few hundred hours — up until 2013 the FAA only required 250 hours of experience to get a certificate allowing commercial flight (ATP). The requirement now is 1,500 hours, but it sure doesn't seem like American air travel has become dramatically safer since 2013.
I don't think passion is the right word, but the USA has a much stronger general aviation culture than many other counties. Someone living in America is going to have many more opportunities to fly a civilian plane than someone living in, for instance, South Korea. The military experience may even be detrimental as it's often going to focus on strict hierarchies (see CRM) when this may create safety problems.
Edit: I want to add that Indonesian aviation is notoriously unsafe and most Indonesian airlines have been banned from EU airspace (with some allowed back more recently). Lion Air, in particular, has a bad record of wrecking planes and lots of allegations about falsifying maintenance records. Hell, there is that one Lion Air captain who posts cockpit videos on youtube (including at least one showing some startlingly sloppy behavior). But if you look at flight 610 specifically you'll start to see a lot of things that would put even the best pilots in a bad situation. Even looking at the data from flightaware should've provoked a bit of an "are these pilots REALLY that bad?" response. A certain amount of initial suspicion was warranted, especially since pilot error is an extremely common cause of crashes even in western countries. A more continued drive to vilify the JT610 pilots or excuse Boeing's behavior is, IMO, out of line.