But the reality is that the US benefits immensely from free democracies with rules-based open markets and international order. Again, do we break that when it suits us? Absolutely. But America being selfish has been a positive outcome compared to, for example, more war in Europe.
Polls consistently show that people recognize the benefits of US hegemony while acknowledging that the US does it purely from self-interest.
Would you like for me to start counting the number of times the US helped install a democracy vs the number of times it installed dictatorships?
What you said doesn’t discount that we are better with free democracies, regardless of whether we see that through. Democracies tend to raise the per capita income across the population, which, in concert with free markets, gives our multinational corporations new markets to sell shit to.
Sometimes we have other more pressing concerns, like oil in Iran/Iraq (a democracy destroyed and created, respectively); global shipping / colonialism in our support of Israel in conflicts with Egypt over the Suez; abandoning our Kurdish allies to keep Turkey happy enough to keep military assets there.
Geopolitics doesn’t always do one thing or another, even if it were perfectly rational. And no foreign policy is that.