The Return of the "Lost Cause"

 

One of the more heinous myths in American history is that of the "lost cause" created after the Civil War by Confederate  sympathizers. The hard truth is that several southern states committed treason by taking up arms against the United States in order to preserve the vicious practice of human slavery. In today's increasingly radical and racist Republican / Trumpist / GQP party, with their attacks on critical race theory and embrace of their white supremacy followers, that "lost cause" myth is rearing its ugly head. Charles Blow writes in the New York Times:

"When the South lost the Civil War, revisionists there invented the propaganda narrative of the “Lost Cause,” positing that the fight had been honorable and righteous and not about maintaining slavery but maintaining a superior way of life. In this narrative, slavery had been good and the enslaved treated relatively well, with many of the enslaved happy workers. [snip]

We are in the midst of another Lost Cause moment. Conservatives in this country lost a battle in the racial war after the publication of The 1619 Project by The Times and after the historic protests that engulfed the country and the world in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

I’m not sure that I would call it a racial reckoning, but it was definitely a racial rousing.

America seemed willing to at least adjust the narrative about the country, how it was born and how it grew, who belongs and to whom a debt is due. But to many, this was the greatest of threats."

All of the agitation from the right-wing over the academic explanation of how racism has been imbedded in our institutions over time is a manifestation of the threat to their cherished white supremacist myth. It's become the rallying cry of Republicans who want to appeal to the basest racist elements in our culture in order to strengthen their base of support.  Blow concludes:

"So Republicans are on a political crusade to protect lore and lies. They know that many Americans, many of them their voters, will take a lie over guilt and atonement, every day of the week. Many are lost causes in the morass of political tribalism, which makes them all the more open to Lost Cause propaganda." 

That's what the rest of us are up against, and must fight.