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Vladimir_Nesov comments on On the Power of Intelligence and Rationality - Less Wrong
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Egocentrism is a high status trait. Suggesting that Americans are able to get away with neglecting stories that don't focus particularly on their influence is to suggest they are able to claim high status. It also suggests that the speaker rejects the implied presumption of higher status over his own group. This would seem to be the default state of anyone who is not cowed into supplication by the status claimants.
Is the core factual claim accurate? That is, do average Americans have the kind of bias in historical education that Dan suggests? I don't particularly care either way but from my observational perspective if Dan's factoid was accurate then Dan could reasonably object to Vladmir's status implication. That implication being that Dan doesn't have the status required to state facts that make Vladmir's group look bad.
"My group" here must be people with bad memory for things that don't interest them. Objection is not to "stating a fact", but to the way it's stated: it's in the "arguments as soldiers" class, missing the context and as a result giving connotations not following from the stated fact ("dark arts" feel). This discipline applies no matter what object-level connotation is created (of course emotions make some violations more salient to my mind than others).