I don't think you're wrong either and I don't think the US is the center of anything other than its own warped fantasies about being the center of everything. But these fantasies are the fantasies of a ruling class who have been the ruling class for a very long while. Old money, in my opinion, creates generation after generation of people who get farther & farther away from the reality that I know & farther into their own warped fantasies of their own "greatness." When Hillary called the flyover states "deplorables" I think that was a case of the servant identifying with her masters. And I do believe very rich people look at the rest of us as beneath them & very much in need of their guidance. I remember a Hunter S. article I read years back where he went to some uber wealthy enclave in Florida(?) with the idea of discovering why the children of incredibly rich people aren't doing incredible things. What he found was a group of young wealthy males who were only concerned with getting wasted while using their wealth to con local girls into bed. They knew that, no matter what they did, they'd one day inherit daddy's kingdom. I think that's called hubris. I think it's that hubris, that born to rule idea that has transformed America from a nation state into an empire. Nation states can have long lives. Empires, not so much. I also think that a place like Europe has a fairly recent memory of how hubris almost destroyed them. Germany in particular understands how quickly hubris can turn into hell. The US, on the other hand, has been relatively unscathed by war in these last 2 centuries so it can bluster and blather on & on as if it knows shit when it really doesn't. That may change sooner than anyone wants.