America Rules and Dominates the World

The American establishment, the American power elite, since at least World War II have had it as an unquestionable dogma that America needs to rule and dominate the planet. So why is that? Why does that resonate on such a deep gut psychological level with us? And yet our leaders are so slick at bullshit that they're able to basically be carrying out a foreign policy of like a cartoon bad guy from a bond film. They couch it in rhetoric that makes it sound like we're the scrappy underdog that doesn't really want to fight or rule anybody,. but only reluctantly does these things like bombing Syria and Libya and whatever.