A usable past cannot be created out of collective guilt or even collective responsibility, however. It's memories of resistance to oppression and exploitation inside and outside the United States that give leftists a usable past. It's erasure of those memories that breeds acquiescence: if no one resisted in the past, why should we now? And it's erasure of the same memories of resistance that sows contempt for the oppressed -- notwithstanding the Christian maxim, no one respects the meek.
^^^^ CB: Besides reviving historical resistance and struggle, jingoism and chauvinism in the present might be abated by masses taking descendent-responsibility for American crimes against humanity ( actually "foreign and domestic"), through the logic that if the truth is faced, patriotic association with national heroics entails descendent-responsibility for national criminalities. With a little less patriotism , we may get a little less U.S. imperialist war in the present. Lets try it. There is no practice showing that it can't be done.
Historic or descendent responsibility might also be the basis for reparations and affirmative action.
In the case of reparations to Japanese Americans, those who paid the reparations were not the identical with the population who did the internments. But it was good for those demi-descendants who did pay, good for their political "souls".
More national soul, less patriotism.