![](https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Nixon-Kennedy-debate-100x100.jpg)
Erasure or sublimation of memory makes it easier to shape the present by controlling or editing history. Doing so preserves a mythic version of a country’s identity, postulates Michael Brenner.
In the early 1990s, Republicans turned Ronald Reagan into an icon; they hailed him for “winning the Cold War;” they used his name to put conservatism beyond challenge. But this deification was hollow, a reality that today’s thoughtful conservatives, like the Independent…