It really does seem more and more likely that the current crop of "leadership" in the west believes their own bullshit that they peddle to the masses for sure. A big part of it is probably the collapse of the USSR, they pre-emptively declared "victory" and haven't really bothered to maintain their imperialist project in a sustainable way because they assume there are no (or weren't even aware of) any alternatives. This would explain a lot of their actions towards China. Both begging China to help them out and also putting tariffs on them and interfering with Taiwan. They honestly seem to think that the "lesser countries" are obligated to do what the west demands and the west can just destroy them automatically. There's a similar situation with Russia there too, they assumed that their embargoes would destroy Russia because they are the wealthy and powerful west, so cutting off trade with them destroys economies. But they didn't actually bother to check what Russia's reaction would be and whether they could survive just fine without western trade. Just pure arrogance and chauvinism.