Oh, he was. He was in the wrong, utterly. But that’s not the story. The story and the reality are not the same thing. The story is that of an individual aggrieved, facing against an unstoppable faceless bureaucracy, who took matters into his own hands in the footsteps of our national heroes of the revolutionary war and the pioneers, and built a manly and impressive machine to enact that will with his own strength.

Nearly every word of the story is factually incorrect, but the story is so compelling, so resonant with our cultural values we’ve been taught since childhood, that the story takes in a life of its own.