We’ve all heard the old cliché that “History is written by the victors.” It’s a catchy little quote and perhaps not as bold of a claim as some think it is. To illustrate, let’s take a look at history courses in United States schools. Yes, we’re going to be talking about that class you probably fell asleep in, but don’t doze off just yet. While the quote above may proclaim that the victor writes history, the loser still has their own account of it. For example, if you travel far enough below the Mason-Dixon line, you’ll start hearing all different kinds of causes for the Civil War. Last year, Texas officials approved new American History textbooks that list slavery as a secondary cause for the Civil War and even downplay the inhumane practice. However, Texas isn’t the only one guilty of reshaping history to their favor, it’s something our entire nation does, along with many other countries across the globe.

So why do we reshape history to our favor? Well, in our case, it might go back to American Exceptionalism (yes I know, more history). To put it simply, American Exceptionalism is the idea that the United States has a unique history and set of ideals, which leads us to thinking that we’re somehow above other countries. While this idea is not nearly as prevalent as it has been in the past, it still lingers in our society and some presidential candidates’ campaigns even have their roots in American Exceptionalism (“Make America Great Again” anyone?).

However, the problem is that we want to believe that the United States is uniquely awesome and that its ideals and actions make it the greatest country on Earth. Now, don’t get me wrong, we’ve certainly done some incredible things. We fought for and subsequently claimed our independence from the most powerful nation in the world at the time. We put a man on the moon and are still the only country to do so. We even invented the Internet. These are only a few of the many accomplishments our country has achieved in its relatively short history.

But at the same time, the United States is anything but infallible. Our mistakes have defined us arguably as much as our accomplishments, only we don’t like talking about them. When we look at our nation’s history, we tend to gloss over things like Native American genocide, Japanese internment camps, war crimes, systematic racism and our horrible track record of foreign intervention. Conversations involving these topics are rarely pleasant ones, but they’re nevertheless conversations we need to have. And it’s not that we should be blamed for our forefathers’ mistakes, but that we should instead learn from these mistakes and hope that future generations will learn from ours. We place a lot of value on being patriotic, but being patriotic isn’t just chanting “USA!” whenever it’s prevalent or backing whatever our government does. Being patriotic is about loving your country, but recognizing that it’s far from perfect and wanting to work towards making it better.