As those of you who know me, I am quite a lover/student of history. I read as much as I can about the American Civil War (ACW). Both the Military and Political histories, a lot. One of the newest things in ACW history studies is the critical look at what is called the “Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History”. I’ll just call it MLC for short. That is why I have the last of the Confederate States of America’s National Flag. For me, it represents the start of the creation of the MLC. Not that the idealizing the cause by the side that lost is anything new. It is not. But it is one of the first such myths in the modern age. Another such myth, one with much more dire results for the world was the “Stabbed in the Back” myth of Imperial Germanys loss in World War One. An it is this kind of dire effects of Lost Side Myths I wish to talk about here.
In the past few weeks since the election on Nov 3rd the myth of the “Stolen Election” has arisen among the MAGA supporters of Donald J Trump. Like the myth of the “Stab in the Back”, this new myth is the deliberate creation of just a few people being foisted off on unsuspecting people. It is meant only to let the leaders of MAGA keep the power they crave. It is to keep their followers from putting the responsibility of the loss where it belongs. On the leaders themselves. On the action these leaders not only let happen but actively encouraged. They are doing this out of fear of their own base and the anger this base feels.
And this fear they feel is quite justified. It is real and they know it is real. They know this because they have been stoking this anger for over twenty years. They are now faced with giving the base someone or something to blame for the backlash of the voters at Donald J. Trump in 2020. And what is good about the myth of the “Stolen Election” is no actual proof is needed other than the loss. All they need do is spin conspiracy theories and when nothing is found say “See, that is just how nefarious the ‘liberals/socialists’ really are”. I can hear you saying “But that is not ‘Logical/Reasonable.’” Your right it is neither reasonable nor logical, but it is the way think.
On Wednesday, 6 January 2021, in the Nation’s capital we saw just how far the leadership and would-be leadership of the Republican are willing to go. Not only did they attempt to challenge the electoral collage votes of two states, Arizona and Pennsylvania, they did this second ((challenge)), Pennsylvania, after an Insurrectionist Mob was sent by President Trump to take and hold the nation’s capital. After the mob broke into both the House and Senate chambers howling for blood. After the mob attempted to take both V.P. and the Speaker prisoners while calling for the hanging of the V.P. They, the Republicans still objected to the Pennsylvanian E.C. Votes. What has been for over a hundred years a boring pro forma action of the Congress was turn into a horrible moment of American history.
We must remember that Donald John Trump is just a symptom of the what is wrong in this country. Getting rid of him must just be the start. We must dig deep and identify what is wrong and we must develop ways to clean up the mess. We must take a long hard look at ‘Social Media’ and figure out just what went wrong and why. We must look at our police and discover just what is going on and what to do about. We must have a thorough house cleaning of our political system to rein in all of the uncontrolled use of false facts and then call them ‘Alt-True’. True/False is a binary state and facts can only be True, False or Un-proven. We must be ready willing and able to recognize and call out willful false states as lies. Only in this can we stop the Myth of the Stolen Election. Only this way can we save out Democracy.