It doesn’t matter if it’s literally true. Like the myths of Santa Claus and Jesus Christ, it exists to tell us stories about ourselves, stories that hopefully encourage our best impulses to resist the inexorable tides of venality and shittiness. That’s what myths are for. Maybe Li’l George Washington didn’t chop down a cherry tree, or maybe he did lie about it. Maybe the first Thanksgiving wasn’t a hippie love fest of cooperation. We tell ourselves how we want to be, not how we are.
We’re depressingly familiar with how we are, there’s no reinforcement necessary.
