I used to work at a registrar and I completely agree with you. This is exactly my take as well (with a small exception for .eu, just don't use it)
For your online identity (ie email address) I'd even go as far as suggesting not using a ccTLD at all, no matter if you check all the boxes. No fancy gTLD either, just use a .com. I don't think any TLD is remotely as reliable as this one (maybe .net because they're both Verisign, but that's it)
I’d say that it depends on your situation and TLD registry. For argument’s sake, if I was a company in, say, India, would I be able to trust that Verisign would keep my .com or .us domain rights against, say, Google? Probably not, so I’d probably prefer a .in domain in that case, since an Indian authority or registrar would be more amenable to arguments and reasoned discourse with me, an Indian company.
You’re unfortunately not guaranteed your country will be a part of EU forever. With Brexit, there was a really long transition period for UK citizens, but in the end they couldn’t keep their .eu domain.
Fortunately .eu is not that popular as a TLD, and Brexit is not a common scenario, but the transition was painful. Honestly we’re all 1 bad election away from $CountryExit, so at least I’m not taking risks with my domains. I don’t want my contact@my-name.eu to become unavailable to me in 10 years.
Nothing, but Brits had to quit their .eu domains due to Brexit. Which seems reasonable to me. Of course, Brexit wasn't; it was manipulated by the Russians.
Before .eu we had .eu.org where the country level was administered by so-called Good People (networking techies of the 90s), so you could have e.g. nl.eu.org this was for free. Back then (end 90s) I didn't envision UK leaving EU. I'm from NL, and I cannot envision NL leaving EU either.
But either way I agree with another comment you're better off with a ccTLD of the country where you were born and/or are residing. Though if I were born in Russia and were residing in USA I wouldn't want a .ru domain (unless if I were running a criminal enterprise?). At least not now. I do think it would be cool to own a .su domain. But that's the thing. Cool, not for anything serious. This was cool in the beginning of the internet, with a fun play e.g. on your last name (gongri.jp comes to mind). But nowadays with the internet being deeply rooted into our every day lives, it is no longer the most clever thing to do. Although as a Dutch person, I wouldn't be particularly worried about a .jp domain. We're on friendly terms.
For your online identity (ie email address) I'd even go as far as suggesting not using a ccTLD at all, no matter if you check all the boxes. No fancy gTLD either, just use a .com. I don't think any TLD is remotely as reliable as this one (maybe .net because they're both Verisign, but that's it)