And while we (post-60s) Americans are culturally reared to cheer for the little guy, the vigilante standing up against The Man, the guy speaking Truth to Power....Assange is none of these. He's an arrogant twat who lucked into probably the largest security breach in American history, and has been wielding it like a little kid waving a flaming torch.
I fail to see how the US people are credibly 'culturely reared to cheer for the little guy'
Have a look at the first three films that I can think of:
Star wars - a small group of rebels and jedi struggle to overthrow the evil empire and their vast armies, despite overwhelming odds
Dodgeball - a group of people from a small gym compete in a dodgeball tournament to prevent their gym from being bought by a large (unpleasant if not evil) gym chain
Lord of the rings - a small group of heroes set out against the might of the armies of mordor to destroy the ring for the good of all middle-earth
Even the movies where the main character is one of the authorities, it is in every instance I can think of (e.g. die hard, james bond) a single person or a small group of people against the baddies - in that case, the baddies have more people and more resources, and become 'The man'.
As soon as someone expresses interest in a position of authority, I find it hard to trust them. There's no reason to desire power unless in pursuit of an agenda, which almost certainly falls into one of two categories.
1. Personal Ambition
2. Conceited belief that one knows how others should live
3. Because it's the best thing to do
A recent example is that me and a group of other people are renting a house for a year next year. When we were putting all our names down, there came the question of who should be head tenant - the position of head tenant is one of responsibility, and since you become the middle man between the letting agency and the rest of the tenants, it can also be considered a position of authority.
When we were renting it, there came the question of who should be head tenant. None of us had had any experience in such matters before, so I volunteered. It was not because I wanted to be head tenant for the sake of being head tenant, nor because I thought that I would be undisputedly the best head tenant ever. It was because we needed
someone to be a head tenant, and spending a long time trying to decide who would be the best when nobody had any idea what would make a good head tenant would just mean that our house would be most likely snapped up by another group.
It's not that people need to be pragmatic, it's that everyone that works for the government is a mindless asshole that doesn't seem to be able to even put on their own socks.
I'm going to guess that you've never been responsible for a group of people before. Not long ago, I was put in charge of a group of twelve people for a week, and I can tell you that it is bloody hard work. Even in a group as small as twelve we had massive problems organizing everyone in order to get our jobs done, and I would not have been able to maintain what we had indefinitely.
The government has to organize thousands of people to do millions of jobs year in, year out. Having experienced the difficulties of organizing people, I'd have to say that they do a bloody good job.