The people without history, the native peoples, don't write the kind of history that we come from. But if we tell the story as a story of conflict, as a story of contested values, as a story where there are native tribes who are being, perhaps, invaded. There are workers on the railroad who are being exploited. There are battles among the capitalists themselves. You know, this isn't just the story of capital against somebody else.
Somebody wins and somebody loses.
And the triumphalism that Waldo is objecting to obviously comes out of the position of those who are triumphing, in effect. It's the sense that they are bringing civilization and progress. It's an interesting question. Because, what has the nation just gone through is recently completed this Civil War that threatened to tear this nation apart. And you would assume that there would be lots of references to what the United States had been through from its founding.