I've been thinking, lately, about similarities between the RNC's treatment of this election and "The Lost Cause" which was a post-Civil War propaganda effort designed to sow division and give generations of Southerners a psychological safety net for bearing such a huge loss. /1

The central theme of The Lost Cause was that the war's central cause was northern aggression (not slavery), and that due to the overwhelming might of an amoral enemy, the South never had a chance to win the war. Like any well designed lie, there was some truth in it /2

The North did have a huge economic advantage, and superior numbers. What The Lost Cause ignores is that The South was winning the war up until Gettysburg. General Lee had some bad luck and then followed that with a few truly disastrous decisions (sup Pickett's Charge) but /3

if a few things go differently, The Army of Northern Virginia would've marched on Washington DC and ended the war right there. All of that was ignored in the post-war years, however, and anybody who claimed The South actually had a chance at winning was branded as a traitor. /4

At the heart of The Last Cause was a guy named Jubal Early, who was under Lee's command. He wrote the first post-war texts that championed this viewpoint. He also doubled down on white supremacy and opposed Reconstructions at every turn /5

Early was a con man. He would later become a central figure in the Louisiana State Lottery scandal, which involved bribery and grift and god knows what else. Look it up if you're curious. The company eventually relocated to Honduras and continued its work illegally. /6

Anyway, the point is, the job of a conman is to find out what people want to believe, and then deliver that to them while you pick their pocket. The number of campaign emails that are being sent out right now soliciting donations for the Trump legal effort should give /7

you an idea of what the actual game is here. Much like The Lost Cause didn't do anything to change the outcome of the war, I don't expect Trump's legal claims to carry any weight. But the longterm effects could be extremely corrosive. /8

I went to public school in a very liberal part of the country, and my teachers and textbooks both delivered false narratives about the Civil War that were rooted in Lost Cause ideology (the war was about economics, Ulysses S Grant was a lousy president, etc) /9

I will try to remain hopeful about the future, but what I'm seeing from dudes like Lindsey Graham and the carpetbaggers that are satellite to trump-world makes me pretty dour. /end

also I just realized that I called it "Reconstructions" instead of "Reconstruction" and I wanna die