My New York commute takes less than 25 minutes, but touches the broadest contours of nearly 250 years of American history.
I board the ferry crossing the mouth of the East River, the turbulent waters across which George Washington once evacuated 9.000 soldiers in front of British redcoats - an escape that proved crucial to the outcome of the Revolutionary War.
From the port side, my gaze reaches all the way to the Statue of Liberty, that beacon of hope for millions of new immigrants.
On the right are the skyscrapers of Manhattan, those emblems of New World ambition.
Above me rises the Brooklyn Bridge, a late 19th-century feat of engineering that was a trip to the moon in its day.
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From the ferry dock in Lower Manhattan, I walk down Wall Street, passing Federal Hall, the place where Washington was inaugurated as America's first president.
Directly across from the general's bronze statue is the New York Stock Exchange, where the financial crashes of 1929 and 2008 posed a major threat to the American capitalist system.
At the top of Wall Street is the cemetery of the Church of the Holy Trinity, where one of the most respected founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, is buried.
Then I turn right on Broadway, with the Gothic domes of what used to be the world's tallest building, the Woolworths, before me, while the art deco halo of the Chrysler Building shimmers in the far distance.
Turning left, I arrive at Zuccotti Park, which after the Great Recession became home to an endless mass of movement tents Occupy Wall Street.
Then I walk the last short stage to the edge of what, in pre-pandemic times, was a busy but quiet square full of people talking in hushed voices.
Here, two square sunken pools with reflective surfaces mark the site of the Twin Towers - monuments to the most horrific day in modern American history.
Not every American has that much history on their doorstep.
But she surrounds them anyway.
It permeates their lives.
It gives color to their political views.
It determines their relationship to the present moment.
When is a pro-Trump crowd stormed the US Capitol on January 6, some of their members chanted "1776," believing they were acting in the same rebellious spirit as the revolutionaries who had defeated the British.
The gun lobby constantly invokes the Second Amendment, even though it wasn't until 2008 that the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional right of every citizen to bear arms.
Nostalgic nationalism explains much of the appeal of Donald Trump's catchphrase Let's Make America Great Again, although he rarely defined exactly which glorious past times he was referring to.
That partly explained his genius: voters were left to imagine American dreamscapes in their own heads.
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One of Trump's last acts as president was to release the 1776 Report, which he sought to refute what the presidential commission behind him called a "radicalized view of American history."
It was a response to the New York Times' Project 1619, a series of articles and speeches that highlighted the African-American experience and the persistence of white supremacism in the American story.
In 1619, 20 African slaves first arrived on these shores.
Campaign "The lives of blacks are important" has its roots in that story, as well as segregation and the unfinished business of the civil rights era.
Many monuments honoring the Confederacy are now damaged or torn down.
Young Democrats are especially motivated and electrified by the idea that historical injustices must be urgently corrected, especially when it comes to racial issues.
This is why in the era of modern America there is no such thing as a long-gone era.
Past battlefields are also today's battlefields.
The political geography of America is increasingly shaped by political historiography.
The past is viewed through a party prism.
A poll conducted by the American Historical Association found, for example, that Democrats believe that people of color do not get the attention they deserve.
Republicans think the military, religious groups, and the Founding Fathers have been neglected.
And at the root of the opposing views lies a fundamental gap.
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Republicans overwhelmingly believe that America's history should be celebrated, while Democrats think that people must face it and make amends for it.
Conservatives accuse liberals of promoting what they call a sanctified interpretation, with an emphasis on self-punishment and very little self-congratulation.
Liberals often dismiss conservative views as cartoonish chest-beating or outdated movies like Gone with the wind.
Instead of agreeing on a collective national history, the trend was different versions.
Black History Month.
LGBT History Month.
Italian American History Month.
Native American Heritage Month.
Adjectives are attached to history. But it also became more complete.
And it is no longer exclusively written by the winners.
Marginalized voices tell stories that need to be heard.
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In a country where the national debate has become binary and simplistic, complex narratives have become increasingly difficult to convey.
But it is precisely the contradictions of the American story that help us understand it better.
The hand that wrote the Declaration of Independence, with its bold declaration that all men are created equal, is also the author of the scientific defense of white supremacism.
Abraham Lincoln called for the freeing of slaves, but he did not believe in racial equality.
The army that helped defeat fascism in World War II was racially divided.
A nation that likes to think of itself as a city on a hill has often adopted a bunker mentality.
But even if that history is not amenable to easy celebration, does that mean it should be completely abolished or erased?
The San Francisco Board of Education recently voted to rename 44 schools, including those named after George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
A committee that advises the mayor of the District of Columbia has proposed renaming dozens of parks, buildings and schools, removing the names of seven presidents, including Thomas Jefferson and even Washington himself.
One of the driving ideas of the left at the moment is presentism: the notion that figures from the past can be legitimately judged on the basis of contemporary customs and principles.
And so the Founding Fathers present themselves less as architects of the new Republic, and more as slave owners and white oppressors.
One of the smarter ideas on the right, on the other hand, is originalism: the belief that you can only understand America's founding document if you understand the intentions of its authors at the time it was adopted.
They practically want to say that the history of the 18th century should be our guide today.
The contextualization of monuments offers some kind of compromise, but it is difficult to reach any kind of contextual consensus.
Should the Lincoln Memorial go along a certain fence?
Should school children be taught to question just the name of the country's capital?
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American history is so hotly contested because so much of it remains unresolved.
The issues that divided the Founding Fathers are still the subject of debate.
How far should the federal government go in meddling in the lives of Americans?
How to divide power between the three branches of government?
Should small states have the same number of senators as the least populated states?
Should Washingtonians be represented, just as they are taxed?
As for the historical events that usually connect this country, they are often based on myths that should make you feel good.
Thanksgiving is one of the perfect examples.
The story of the Pilgrims merrily breaking bread with the Indians shortly after crossing the Atlantic promoted the perception that the natives gladly welcomed European settlers to their shores.
It ignores the murderous brutality of white settlement and the usurpation of native land.
Historical amnesia is another problem: the removal of unpleasant memories.
The incarceration of Asian Americans at the start of World War II is often swept under the rug, in part because it tarnishes the achievements of the liberal icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The Tulsa massacre is often ignored.
For many of Donald Trump's followers, January 6, the storming of the US Capitol, is as if it never happened.
And then there is false history - tendentiously fictitious and misleading narratives intended to shape an alternate reality.
Most Republicans, for example, still tell pollsters that they believe Joe Biden somehow stole the presidential election, even though he clearly didn't.
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When I arrived in the US as a bewildered teenager in the mid-eighties, one of the things that seduced me about America was its obsession with the future.
Almost four decades later, I'm amazed at how much she remains a prisoner of the past.
Rather than being cyclical, history seems depressingly repeating itself.
We keep having the same discussions.
We keep crossing the same territory.
"We cannot escape our own history."
Abraham Lincoln's words seem more relevant today than they were during the Civil War.
Confronting versions of America's past have created antagonistic versions of America's present.
This makes it easier to explain why this country so often seems to be in a state of cold civil war and why I have the feeling that I have been reporting on two Americas for so many years.
And now I should end this by saying that I will no longer be commuting to work.
Not because of Covid-19.
Fortunately, the city is reopening.
That's because I'm leaving New York, but so is the BBC.
For more than a quarter of a century, I sat in a seat in the rows of history.
Thank you for allowing me to share so much of what I have seen with you.
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