January 6: The New Lost Cause

Click here for an article in The Atlantic by David A. Graham entitled "The New Lost Cause," subtitled "Republicans are holding up the January 6 insurrection—an effort to overthrow the American government—as the high-water mark of patriotism."

He begins by telling of a rally in Virginia for Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, a hardcore Trump guy (Trump didn't attend the rally, but he phoned in). At one point, an emcee introduced a speaker by saying, “She’s carrying an American flag that was carried at the peaceful rally with Donald J. Trump on January 6.”

So now the Republicans are venerating objects associated with January 6, a day they are celebrating, rather than condemning it as a violent, treasonous attempt to overthrow a legitimately elected government.

"The Lost Cause" is the name Republicans give to the Southern attempt to overthrow a legitimately elected government in 1861; they glorify Southern actions in the Civil War.

Elevating this banner to a revered relic captures the troubling transformation of the events of January 6 into a myth—a New Lost Cause. This mythology has many of the trappings of its neo-Confederate predecessor, which Trump also employed for political gain: a martyr cult, claims of anti-liberty political persecution, and veneration of artifacts.

To Trump and his followers, "January 6 was a righteous attempt by brave patriots to take back an election stolen from them. The day’s events produced a martyr—Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to enter the Speaker’s Lobby of the House. The rioters who remain imprisoned, meanwhile, are “political prisoners.” Now objects carried that day have become sacred too."

Ashli Babbitt's death saddens me. It should never have happened. She was duped by Trump and his minions into believing she was doing a good and patriotic thing, when she was led to her death by unscrupulous, traitorous cowards.

Graham concludes:

The problem with these myths, the Lost Cause and the New Lost Cause, is that they emphasize the valor of the people involved while whitewashing what they were doing. The men who died in Pickett’s Charge might well have been brave, and they might well have been good fathers, brothers, and sons, but they died in service of a treasonous war to preserve the institution of slavery, and that is why their actions do not deserve celebration.

The January 6 insurrection was an attempt to subvert the Constitution and steal an election. Members of the crowd professed a desire to lynch the vice president and the speaker of the House, and they violently assaulted the seat of American government. They do not deserve celebration either.