Agreed. But when myths become sufficiently disconnected from large portions of the community they need to change or, in modern parlance, be deconstructed. The process is not usually pretty and 'western civilization' has been going through just that process since WW II, more intensively starting in the '60s. Widespread myths of the racial superiority of the 'white race', and, hence, the justification for white domination of 'lesser races' were challenged, most strongly by the victims of these myths, non-whites.

Then it became a question of what to think about that and how to respond to that whole process. For a large portion of whites the reaction was one of angry denial. A corollary of the myth of the superiority of the white race was the whole post-WW II American triumphalism with America as a unique moral force for good in the world. It had always been in conflict with reality, but, until the whole Vietnam issue blew up, it was the tacit understanding of a majority in the USA. The divisions that mythic struggle engendered are also still with us.

I grew up believing much of those common myths and still did when I started college in June, '60. By fall of '61 I had changed. That I gave voice to my dissidence did me no good in Oklahoma or Arizona, but in California I found a home.

The expression of views corrosive to the prevailing myth so alarmed professors in the History Department at the U of Arizona that they gave me a terminal masters degree without even telling me what they had done. I didn't find out for close to 50 years, as I never applied to other, better programs. A.J. Hobson described this process well from the English perspective in his 1902 book, Imperialism, some of the insights from which resonated with me and which I naively embraced in seminars. I actually thought that freedom of belief and opinion really existed in Academe. Hobson described the view of educators in the England of his time for selection of aspiring educators as "sound men, sound views". It was the same in Arizona. I was 'unsound'.

The process rolls on. One of the better things that Trump has done is to spectacularly challenge this myth of US exceptionalism hilariously in defense of his business relationship with the Russian state under Putin. As he noted on Fox during the Superbowl: "We've got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country's so innocent?" A large portion of his supporters are also believers in the myth and were upset. I take my pleasures where I may.    

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."