I grew up under this rhetoric for those years you mention and I still think having a kind of Team America: World Police in real life is much worse and I don't want that back. But these are not mutually exclusive issues because super powers are supposed to balance each other out like the system of balances and checks with independent powers of a democracy. I like to think the world is on average a big democracy and no single super power should be its cop but China and Russia pretty much represent a joint state of affairs that is detrimental to every freaking human being. To see the US on its kees like I said is pretty depressing to the balances and checks expectations we all used to have.