There is a sickening phenomenon that routinely occurs in America — carried out by popular media and aided by historical amnesia — that, as time goes on, glorifies and sanitizes powerful politicians who did horrendous shit to innocent people all around the world. And David Letterman’s fawning Netflix interview with Barack Obama was one of the purest examples of this in some time.

The interview essentially boiled down to 56 minutes of Letterman telling Obama how incredible he is — based on literally zero substance. And this, folks, is how history is written in our collective minds. Not by some class in a university or by some heavily researched history book. But by this kind of uncritical garbage.

“When I was a kid and it’s still taught today, irrespective of the man or woman who holds the office, you have to respect the office of president. Without a question of a doubt, you are the very first president I truly and fully respect,” Letterman said.

But the interview didn’t stop at simply saying Obama is a great man. It went much further in its mythologizing, going so far as to draw comparisons between Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. (as well as the other truly respectable men and women who bravely marched across the bridge in Selma, despite knowing they were putting their lives at risk). But the truth is, Obama couldn’t be any more different than the man who led the fight to get black people civil rights.

King called America the “greatest purveyor of violence” in the world. Obama said “he’s really good at killing people.” King railed against the Vietnam War even though it made him a pariah. Obama bragged about being the first sitting president to serve two full terms at war. King constantly spoke out about the ills of poverty. Obama wouldn’t mention it. King was an ardent democratic socialist. Obama called himself a “moderate Republican.” Putting these two people’s names in the same sentence is not only offensive and stupid, but grossly propagandistic.

But it’s not surprising. It’s what our country does best. Bold figures who question the very fabric of American society are marginalized and whitewashed. While figures who put a pretty face on empire are granted sainthood. And, make no doubt about it, Barack Obama is the definition of a pretty face: all the political niceties one could ever dream of, wrapped in a neoliberal’s wet-dream.

And if you look at it objectively, the canonizing of Obama is disturbing. Because whether you like it or not, he was responsible for the deaths of thousands. But, of course, none of that had any place in Letterman’s sycophantic interview. Rather than mentioning the seven different countries Obama bombed, Letterman showed pictures of the former president parasailing and asked him about his love for his family. And in one fell swoop, played a large role in normalizing a person who ordered 10x more drone strikes than George W. Bush. Strikes that hit the wrong target nearly 90% of the time and targeted weddings and funerals. But he speaks nice and loves his family, so that none of that matters.

And this is ultimately how evil shit is done in our name — and how we sleep soundly at night. We ignore it. We build myths. We lie to ourselves. But if we had the courage to stare it square in the eyes, maybe we wouldn’t be willing to accept it and, in turn, might have a vastly different opinion on those leading us and our government in general.

Recently, an incredible piece of journalism that actually highlights the brutalities of our actions was published by The Intercept. The story details the carnage of a drone strike in rural Afghanistan that maimed and blinded a 4-year-old girl. It’s a devastating and disturbing story, but a must read in order to see the human toll of Obama’s policies. The girl’s entire family was killed.

“When Mohibullah arrived at the blast site, he saw that of the 17 bags of flour he had helped load onto the truck, just two were intact. The rest had splayed open. There was a sick beauty to the scene — white powder over blood-red carnage. These were men and women Mohibullah had grown up with, but he couldn’t recognize any of them. Their mangled body parts made it difficult to ascertain where one person ended and another began: spilled brains over severed limbs over ground flesh. Amid the charred corpses, he found a woman who appeared to be nearing death. Nearby, a girl lay mute. Mohibullah did not recognize the girl — her face had been ‘scrambled, she didn’t have her nose.’ She still had both of her legs, but he wasn’t sure if her torso was connecting them to the rest of her body. It wasn’t until she asked in a frail voice — ‘Where is my father? Where is my mother?’ — that he understood her to be his 4-year-old niece Aisha.”

But, of course, stories like this aren’t heard by most. And the disgusting policies behind them are almost never discussed either — not by Letterman and not by most major media outlets. And certainly not with this kind of unflinching honesty. That would be uncouth, after all.

In fact, it took a 12-year-old Afghan girl who was shot in the head by extremists and a regular person in a Google+ Hangout before Obama ever faced with a challenging question over his drone policy. Meanwhile, our leading media outlets were too busy running drone strike stories, completely devoid of humanity, that routinely and blindly took the government at its word on civilian casualties. Even though any fighting age male — 16 or over — killed or wounded was automatically presumed to be a terrorist, regardless if there was no evidence to support the claim.

If you are honest with yourself, there are no two ways around it. This is propaganda, through and through. And Letterman — much like Hollywood’s war movies and most of the news media — is engaging in it and, as a result, furthering a heavily skewed narrative that almost never takes into the account the victims of America’s military might.

But it’s about time we call a spade a spade and stop choosing to ignore, downplay, and apologize for despicable acts.

Obama isn’t a good person. You can’t do any of those things and still be considered decent. And if you think he is a good person because he’s friendly, polite, dignified, and/or any other silly superficial reason, then you should probably grow up and leave your 3rd grade understanding of morality at the door.

Basically, can we all just strive to not be like Letterman in this case. Instead of groveling at the feet of powerful people, let’s start holding them accountable for the bad shit they do. No more treating them like deities. And no more giving them undue admiration because “you have to respect the office of president.” That’s nothing but mindless bullshit, plain and simple.

And as Obama cogently told Letterman, in order to create a “more perfect” America and enact real change, ordinary people must be able to say “you know, that’s not right.”

Indeed, Mr. President. Drone bombing innocent people isn’t right. And, for that reason alone, you don’t deserve our respect.