There is considerable whitewashing of history. The Dunning school portrayed Andrew Johnson as a victim of liberal Republicans. But it's not just the curriculum or the historians. Anyone who accepts an obvious lie is also complicit. Consider Marjorie Taylor Greene's recent paralleling of a convicted Donald Trump to Jesus and Nelson Mandela. Obviously a number of Greene's constituents took the comparison as gospel (I live in MTG's district, so I know these people). I understand that given the flaws and omissions in standard high school history classes, perhaps most of my fellow southerners don't know much about Nelson Mandela. But surely they can see that it's wildly inappropriate, not to mention historically misleading, to associate Trump with Jesus. Now if the Jesus bit doesn't clue Greene's listeners that maybe they should read up about Mandela (a simple Wikipedia article would suffice), then what will disabuse them? . But the Greenies WANT to believe that Trump is an innocent victim of a corrupt system (and in most cases they see themselves as blameless victims of anti-racism programs), so why should they look under the covers to see who they're in bed with? No amount of information and logic you could force-feed aggrieved southern racists will convince them that reparations are justified.