If you actually think and act that way, so much the better. I don't even particularly disbelieve you. But can you really look at the mass of humanity around you and believe they think the same way? Even if they claim to value critical thinking, watch what they do, what they buy, how they vote.

You've most likely trained yourself to value critical thinking in your leaders, most likely from an early enough age that you don't remember what it was like without it. Lots of people don't get this training or don't apply it in a fully general way.

Hm, having a journalist and an academic (with a heavy focus on applied rigorous statistics) as parents probably helped there, you are right. But school is supposed to teach this, at least here in Sweden it is a part of the curriculum. But indeed, that doesn't seem to help, and the US it is especially bad (not saying the situation is good here either though).

There are other things I do remember having to train myself to do though, such as not make value judgments based on the language skill level of others. Rationally I have never cared where someone is from and if they are a native speaker or not, but emotionally that required some effort.