The New Lost Cause

On a bright but cold day on Feb. 10, 2007, Barack Obama, then the junior U.S. senator from Illinois, announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States in Springfield, Illinois. He announced his candidacy at the Old State Capitol building, where Abraham Lincoln delivered his “House Divided” speech. Americans under the sound of his voice as he delivered that speech, resonated deeply with the symbolism this sight represented. Here in the state capital of the man who emancipated the slaves stood a junior Black senator, only the third one elected since reconstruction, announcing his run to be the U.S. president. There was a deep welling up of pride amongst millions of Americans that finally there was going to be a change … “one that we could believe in” as the slogan went viral. It was 16 years ago in Springfield, that this senator with an odd-sounding name called on Americans to “take up the unfinished business of perfecting our union.” And many did. And just like Lincoln, the forces of resistance spared no time to rally against him and his vision of perfecting the union once he was elected. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) organized a secret meeting to put together the game plan to obstruct the incoming administration’s agenda for the next four years on the night of Obama’s inauguration. It didn’t take long before the far right-wing media outlets like Fox News and others began pushing the false narrative that Obama wasn’t actually a native-born citizen, therefore, excluding him from being president. Right-wing pundits went overboard on character assassination, so much so that even  reality TV star Donald J. Trump hyped the falsehood. This, before anyone suspected that Trump might actually have designs on running for the office, let alone that his television personality wasn’t far off from his real persona as a  professional liar and grifter.

Most mainstream media outlets reported on this with little critical thought and so relished in the improved ratings that the farcical political banter brought. Covering the White House battles and counter-punches in American media is like covering the royal scandals in the United Kingdom — it makes for great headlines but offers little in substance or clarity. In fact, who was listening to Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly or Bill O’Reilly? Apparently, millions of Americans who only have cable TV as a steady diet.

The battle over the Affordable Care Act, reflecting a Democratic Party aspiration since President Harry Truman introduced a universal healthcare plan in 1945, was immediately attacked and labeled Obamacare. It subsequently cut in half the number of uninsured U.S. citizens without health insurance and has been repeatedly attacked and challenged. But it survived. The Affordable Care Act  is perhaps Obama’s greatest legacy,  even though it doesn’t provide universal health care. The thing is, the objection wasn’t really about health care. It was about private profits versus public health. What we were witnessing was the reemergence of the “lost cause” myth of the Old South that we now see being played out in Florida, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky. The battle cry against “Woke-ism” and abortion or trans rights all considered a conspiracy of liberal progressive ideology and policy as an expression of sensitivity to systemic injustices and prejudices.

When #45 astoundingly won the presidency in 2016 against all expectations, he wasted no time in stoking nativist prejudices of the former Confederate states.  Trump’s presidency was like the first shots fired at Fort Sumter starting the Civil War and in like spirit, it ended with an attempt on the U.S. Capitol four years later. In the 1860s, an estimated 750,000 are estimated to have died due to that war. By contrast, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-23 claimed the lives of 1,127,152 Americans. I speculate that many of these are casualties of the war against the Affordable Care Act; the war against the government’s health and mask directives; and the war against the very idea of a Black president. The Republicans are very much supported by the Confederate flag-waving “Lost Causers” now rallying around Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas on anti-abortion, gun rights and everything anti-woke!

This is the rise of the Old South with a new kind of Jane Crow legislation and the clawback of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to boot. 

The rise in mass shootings this year alone is another correlated consequence of the chaos sown by gun rights groups and Trump’s cult-like following. As the do-nothing-Republicans in Congress steer the  nation to the edge of fiscal insolvency in their game of chicken with the debt ceiling, one can only surmise that their end game is to create such a crisis that this not-so-civil conflict will propel them back to power so that they can bury Roe vs. Wade in Arlington Cemetery.

This conflict and it is very much that, calls on every citizen to make a moral judgment of what is right and just. It is our moment to see if this democracy will survive and live up to its promise of liberty and justice for all, very much like the abolition of slavery. The very same moral principles apply and some reflection upon that history just might enlighten everyone as to the meaning of freedom.  

The thing is, the first civil war was never really settled, and the ghosts of the original sin continue to haunt this nation. You can actually hear it in the words used by DeSantis against critical race theory or the banning of Toni Morrison’s books in Florida school libraries. The “Lost Cause” has been exhumed, again!