Little known fact: Starlink should be a pure orbital internet backbone to communicate anywhere in the world, right? Because of the laser links between satellites?

Not so much. All the traffic from the US must transit through an earthbound surveillance hub, so the latency advantages are lost. Same with other countries.

(Please anyone correct me if I'm wrong about this, I was gravely disappointed to hear it and would love to hear that I'm wrong)

Gotta keep in mind that PRISM (or maybe something like it) is still a thing. If US traffic isn't sniffed by Starlink itself, then it's happening at the next hop in the nearest terrestrial network provider.