> American business based in America and doing business that benefits American citizens, rather than some random banana republic.

This makes a huge presumption of rock solid stability of political/economic system, that America is not going the direction of a banana republic, in terms of graft, corruption and patronage, which it certainly seems to be these days.

Interesting read from 2004: https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2004/12/20/we-were-sold-...

But I strongly disagree with your conclusion. gTLDs are also run by profit-driven companies and operate under ICANN's US-rooted system. ccTLDs at least offer some jurisdictional autonomy and diversity.

And many "trendy" ccTLDs are not actually run by unstable local governments. .me, for example, is operated with GoDaddy and Identity Digital, while .to relies on Tucows, a Canadian company.

So the irony is that these ccTLDs often end up controlled or technically managed by the same North American companies you consider more trustworthy. Very few small/island countries actually manage their ccTLD directly, which is extremely sad.

Didn't the crustacean site temporarily lose its domain a minute ago because someone had to make an in-person payment to whatever Serbian mafia controls .rs?

Vanity domains are beyond stupid and not worth the trouble.