And here we see that Irving is rather honest, if mistaken. The Enclave, or at least most of its leadership, was a bunch of genocidal maniacs, but trying to view the E-USA through that lens when they are entirely new faction/nation, has just made him come to the wrong conclusions that would otherwise make sense, except arguably the Mars landing and Liberty Prime, as both of those were true and within possibility even for a totalitarian faction with this much technology, he just failed to discern that they were true. And he doesn't intend to rewrite history, as he sees the foolishness of not trying to remember it as it was, and the horrible consequences that can lead to, at least trying to do so on such a mass-scale of history (especially if European states are still around to remember it).
He's basically Cold War Sovietologists, but wrong in his basic assumptions. He's also not totally pure in his motives, and is subconsciously worried about the implications of what he "debunks".
Much better than his revisionist student he is talking to who is something along the lines of a crossing together a stereotype of a SJW and a stereotype of a right-winger patriot who refuses admit his country did nothing at all at any point of their history.
She is inspired by actual sentiments I've encountered over on the Fallout reddit and related, and also influenced by one of the key cultural differences between E-USA and the NCR.
In E-USA, you say "gladiator" and the guy you're talking to thinks "Ancient Rome".
In the NCR, you say "gladiator" and the guy you're talking to thinks "Caesar's Legion".
I can see that the Brotherhood is dealing with their own power struggles and the acknowledgement of a possibility of a civil war, and that it is their liberal faction of the Lyons's BoS which may be more at fault as they promote too many people into their ranks but not have enough land for them to personally administer, possibly making them eye other Brotherhood Chapters' lands with envy and greed. Besides all the outsider permitted technological disputes as well between the orthodox and liberal parts of the BoS.
The Brotherhood's problem is that they need a large PA force to stand up to the other forces' militaries. Now only the BoS members (who are a warrior/administrative elite class much like the knights of Medieval Europe) are allowed to have PA, so they need to vastly expand the size of the BoS in general. To the point that there are more BoS members than there are meaningful patches of land for all of them to adminster.
And now we have a more sympathetic vie of Kimball who wants to finish the war to put this all behind him so he can deal with his feudalistic neighbors, New Reno crime families and the Brahmin Barons who basically live like feudalistic lords within the Republic. We see just because he is currently tolerating them does not mean he likes them or does not plan to deal with every single one of them when he finally gets the time, resources and ability to do so.
Yeah, like I said - if FO2 is Star Wars, this is LoGH.
In Fo2, you go on a cool adventure (stopping at such fun places as Tattarroyo, New Mos Eisley, San Cloud City etc.) to stop the Galactic Enclave led by Emperor Richardson and blow up the Death Oil Rig and fight Darth Horrigan and who cares about the enemy mooks they're just faceless stormtroopers anyways, have fun!
In EATB, there's the USA and the NCR, and one has authoritarianism issues and the other has corruption issues and both have valid points and both have closets full of skeletons and they're fighting for continental dominance and they've been at war for so long that peace is unthinkable and there are sympathetic characters on both sides and political intrigues and epic battles.
(And don't think I'm denigrating FO2 by that! Both kinds of stories have their place).
