The third thing is that looking at history makes you realize how aberrational the current moment is. America is a conscious effort to collect solutions to the question of how human beings live together and function. It is the highest collection of solutions in human history. Having now gone through the discontinuity, we're about to come out as America again. History is the history of our civilization.
American civilization is a way of being.
It's like Zen. There's an American exceptionalism that can best be understood through history. History is a resource to be learned from and used. It's cheaper to imitate than to invent. There are techniques you can learn from historical experience that can help you solve problems.