Sorry I had not seen this thread before. If you read film history you know that we literally had a propaganda program in the 1930s-50s, designed to fill us all with Americanism and anti-communism, government and studios working together to preserve the capitalist order lest labor ever try to get the upper hand. Generations later, we still think capitalism is inherently good and restraining it is un-American.

Later, like 1980s-present, there has been another layer of brain-training going on, by the tremendous flood of cop/detective/spy/soldier shows. Those in authority are always right, and are under siege by incredibly bad guys, and their soldiers/detectives/cops/spies must use brains and brawn and technology to prevail, and bend the law when necessary. It places us all in the mindframe of 'we must defend the President/ambassador/american interests at all costs'. Only now with the masked ICE thugs do we see that authority is not always the good guy.

As far as the Revolution, I learned a lot about it back when the play 1776 came out, and then spent a lot of time in Williamsburg. I wasn't excited about the simpleminded film The Patriot crushing the war's plotline into the usual Hollywood formula. Maybe we'd all know more about our rights and our revolutionary struggles if there had been a whole raft of better films and TV shows made about it.

And it's a very unpopular view, but I don't like everyone deciding that Ken Burn's personal edit of history should become our central accepted truth. I hope the work gets some new people interested in American history, of course.