The past is confusing, difficult to understand, even more alarming for the people who inhabit the present as provincials. Much safer than reading rigorous history books is reading historical novels.
An entire police organization has now been established in the world dedicated to the purification of the past. The Past Police infiltrated my Kindle some time ago and caused significant modifications to several James Bond novels that I had saved on it. Irony and ambivalence are not appreciated by notifying the Police of the Past.