Yes, but... one might also suggest that your original insight/perspective is not without value. To say, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," is certainly not without specific and profound meaning. We tend to go through our lives thinking about how a system of government -- which is really just a way of framing how the totality of a community the size of a country -- is serving our needs. But it's an important flip at key moments to think in the other direction: how our daily choices, values, priorities, etc can serve to make that totality better, stronger, more able to stand up to its existential obstacles. It's difficult to see that as cliche or mundane or, as didion puts it, as having "no meaning at all".