In 43 years, I’ve learned a lot about how to live here. I’ve even been told twice by old-timers to call myself a Mainer. Closest I’ll come, though, is to say that my grandparents and mother are buried in Kennebunk, and that’s almost Maine. But to many Mainers, I’ll always be a flatlander.

This fight isn’t about blocking history or erasing the country’s sins but drawing a line between hifalutin political advocacy and thorough, truthful instruction in the American past.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is part of the fierce reaction to the civil rights movement and its drive to provide equal justice to all, by correcting the entrenched inequities in our system as they apply to women, gays and lesbians and particularly Blacks and other people of color. Every movement for reconstruction in this country has triggered a reaction — and DeSantis sees political benefit in making himself a leader of that reaction.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has quit, and not for the usual reasons of scandal or the all-purpose excuse “to spend more time with my family.” In a burst of honesty worthy of emulation by other leaders, Ardern has resigned because she says she has “nothing left in the tank.”