History can be and often is a narrative. Otherwise, especially for the most recent centuries, we'd get buried in mountains of facts. However, some of these narr

History can be and often is a narrative. Otherwise, especially for the most recent centuries, we'd get buried in mountains of facts. However, some of these narratives are more true than others, despite whatever flavor of post-modernism they teach in colleges today. The Government/State sanctioned version of this is not a history, but a "founding myth", ie propaganda. There was a great exhibit at the German Historical Museum of how countries had to invent a whitewashed version of their countries past after WWII: https://www.dhm.de/archiv/ausstellungen/mythen/english/ https://www.dhm.de/archiv/ausstellungen/mythen/english/ The book is well worth reading as well. Acknowledging the complexity of American history does not mean giving up on an imagined community of America. In fact, doing so is the only way to heal the nation and enlarge that imagined community to include those who've been erased out of that history.