I posted this in the downstairs thread, and it sums up my point of view as best I can.

For too long, Americans have viewed themselves and their history as some manner of divine manifestation of God’s Will. The Founding Fathers have been elevated to the level of deities in the minds of far too many, and the Constitution is viewed as some sacred and inviolable text - sacrosanct and holy.

But this is an erroneous view. The Founding Fathers were all too human, and they made a tragic mistake right at the beginning; they allowed slavery to continue. Granted, like all men, they were products of their times, and the unfortunate truth is that white supremacy - and specifically, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant supremacy - was accepted as common knowledge.

Until we, as a people, can admit honestly and openly that white supremacy was - and still is, in far too many places in America - a de facto though not de jure part of the American fabric of daily life, we will not move ahead.

Mr. Coates’ article cites the example of post-WWII West Germany, and it’s admission of responsibility, as a nation and a people and a culture, for the horrific atrocities perpetrated by the previous Nazi government. There is nothing more painful than to be brutally honest about oneself, and to admit that everything you believed, everything you had been taught, your culture, your societal norms, the whole enchilada - a nation’s very foundational mythologies - have caused genuine harm to others who were viewed as “outside” that national myth and that our society has made horrible mistakes and committed grave injustices against others, and that even if you can’t compensate those victims financially, you can at least beseech them for forgiveness.

There is no way forward until you atone for the past. Then we can move forward - then we can say, “Now we shall truly build a nation where all are created equal, and that all of us will share in the bounty our nation has to offer; that we shall work together as brothers and sisters, no matter our color or creed or where in the world our forefathers came from, because we are the United States of America, and though we’re not perfect, that’s no reason for us not to try make ourselves better.”

But we must part with our illusions first.

And from what I can see in the Tweets at the top of the story, there’s a whole lotta people who will simply never part with their illusions - or more, appropriately, delusions.