Syndicated columnist Mark Munro Dion: Prepare for a new wave of Lost Cause iconography
I can see it now. If former President Donald Trump loses again, or if he wins and gets whapped with the 25th Amendment, the iconography of The Lost Cause, applied so successfully to the Confederacy by Alabama, will be applied to the Trump cause.
As Melania shakes her fist at the sky and swears, "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!" Mar-a-Lago stands in the background in ruins.
As Atlanta burned, as Yankees freed the slaves, as Gen. Robert E. Lee hollered "I quits!" the machinery of myth cranked up to produce a palatable, if sad, narrative of defeat.
Thus it may be with the fall of Donald Trump. Oh, sure, you may remember the whole thing as the downfall of an unctuous used idea salesman who never managed to win the popular vote, but others will be stung, shattered, impotent against history.
And for them, there will be the iconography of The Lost Cause, the made-up memory of how the people of the nation (or some of them) rose up for states' rights, for guns and against abortion, and against critical race theory and all manner of communist, gay, Harvard elitism.
And how, because of dark, murky forces, the bravery of the MAGA hats failed, just as the noble bravery of the Confederates failed.
"No, they never could defeat us, / but we never could evade / their dirty foreign politics / and cowardly blockade," runs a Confederate nationalist ditty about the reasons for losing the war.
"No, they never could defeat us, / but we never could evade / their courts and laws and voting / and ability to read," will run some ditty after Trump is tumbled down. It could be a hit for Kid Rock. And perhaps on the town square, next to the statue of Confederate Gen. Lucius T. Slavewhupper, will be the statue of Trump, noble in defeat, a sword in his hand, raised to defy every unseen hand that plunged a dagger into his proud back.
The commemorative-item companies can start pushing out the plates showing George Soros with beady eyes, the eternal, mythical Jew, his tentacles wrapped around the court system. Another will show Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama locked together in an unholy embrace while Melania lies bound and gagged at their feet. Actually, both of those may already be in circulation, the perfect gift for the defeated warrior who stumbled back home after Jan. 6 to tell his children how something, something no one could see, some Pelosi witchery, kept him and his comrades from stopping Joe Biden's election.
Oh, sure. You're laughing, but the country is still full of people who believe in the original Lost Cause and who will proudly insist slavery had nothing to do with the Confederacy, that most citizens of the Confederacy didn't own slaves or knew of their existence.
A lot of people made (and make) a lot of money selling MAGA junk, most of it manufactured in China. There's no reason why those people can't jump into the Lost Cause business and start selling small statues of Donald J. Trump nailed to the cross. It'll look great on the table at Easter dinner, right between the ham and the macaroni and cheese.
After all, we are a Christian nation.
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