It was on that paper’s website that I had the pleasure of publishing Not All History is Made Equal (2021), which detailed the extensive history of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and its supporters in promoting the now-infamous Lost Cause mythology. It remained on the website for a year and is still there for anyone to see its original form.

In October of 2022, I decided to re-publish the article to Injustice Magazine, as I felt, and still do feel, that remembering the Lost Cause as a danger to historical memory remains a critical component of history. It was here when I received a comment from Mr. Sturgeon.

I hope you take this with the kind spirit with which it is intended, but I challenge you to dig a bit deeper into this subject. It is not as straightforward as it may appear. While your points are well-substantiated by a wealth of historical evidence, I believe your evaluation leaves a bit to be desired and, perhaps, a few additional nuances might broaden your perspective on this complex subject. Additionally, I have a few questions related to your motivations behind this article (not to suggest they are not well-meaning). But who is your target audience? Those who already hold your opinions, or those whom you seek to persuade with new information? Who are you arguing against? As you mentioned, Confederate Monuments grow thinner by the day, is your post intended to combat Neo-Confederate backlash? If so, who are the significant intellectual or political voices behind said backlash? Finally, have you ever genuinely aspired to listen to those who revere these statues? Are these statues (and other such cultural adornments) fully understood by the history behind them, or should we try to understand what they mean to those who embrace them?

Having grown up in the South, I’ve read evaluations such as yours for most of my life. My objection isn’t so much that you’re factually incorrect (though I believe your overall evaluation could benefit from additional considerations). Still, I question how your piece is intended to push the envelope. How does this particular take serve to move us forward or combat prejudice? The statues are all but gone and anything resembling the once-vibrant reach or Lost Cause Mythology is reduced to a whisper in a few marginalized corners of academia like the Abbeville Institute.

I simply wonder what possible pedagogical or constructive purpose this argument serves in 2022. This interpretation is already triumphant. The statues are all but down. If there was ever an opportunity to challenge your historical evaluation, the time is long past. Essentially, this reads more like a victory lap than a constructive take.

What purpose can it now serve but to congratulate those for further victories against a force that, for all intents and purposes, gave up the fight ten years ago?

I invite you to take a look at my piece encapsulating the current societal meaning of Confederate monuments, among other things. May give you a few additional angles to consider.

Either way, thanks for the well-substantiated read. Though I’ve read many similar takes, they rarely employ your refreshing mastery and fluid implementation of primary sources.

Best, Joel Walker Sturgeon (2022)

Responding to the Comment

Firstly, I would like to thank Mr. Sturgeon, as I did before, for his candor and polite response. I have yet to receive such a polite and honest response from any other critic I have faced in my writing career. Very few have handled their positions with the grace and respect that Mr. Sturgeon demonstrated those months ago. It is one of the reasons I so thoroughly regret not getting to this reply sooner.

That said, I do think I should address some of the questions Mr.Sturgeon presented in this comment. Starting off, Mr. Sturgeon asks what my target audience is. Do I seek to reach out to those who already agree with me? Am I seeking to reach out to those who have yet to be persuaded by concerns over the Lost Cause? Or am I attempting to respond to a pro-Lost Cause backlash?

To address the question of a target audience, I want to emphasize that I appeal to whoever is willing and able to consider new information or a detailed analysis of historical memory.

The Lost Cause, though weaker than it once was, is still significant in the fact that it demonstrates how suppressing literature and information can reframe entire historical themes and legacies. The UDC was especially strong on this front, writing guidelines that required textbooks that didn’t fit Lost Cause narratives to be labeled with the phrase “unjust to the South.” As I noted in my aforementioned essay, the mythology was directly related to the violent white supremacy that propagandists wanted to promote in their work.

Laura Martin Rose, book infamously titled The Klu Klux Klan or Invisible Empire, which promoted the idea that the Klan was “glorious” and heroic to the South. From the very beginning, these organizations intended to spread, not remove, racism from the South.- Conor Kelly, Not All History is Made Equal, 2021.

Remembering that historical fact is critical not solely as a matter of remembering the role white supremacy plays in our society but also as a means to remember that historical accuracy is not guaranteed. It is something we must fight for, always.

It is in that spirit I wrote that article, and it is in that spirit I respond today. My audience is the American public, the public that must deal with its past, both in the South and North. Remembering how historical facts were censored in the name of white supremacy serves as a warning from our nation’s darker spirits. We must face them.

As to the issue of pushing the envelope, I have been doing that for several years now and did so as far back as 2020, when the founder of my Alma Mater, Bishop Mathias Loras, was outed as having owned an enslaved woman Marie Louise. Loras, my Alma Mater’s namesake, rented Marie out to others in Alabama to work for them, avoiding the northern prohibition on slavery.

When the news came out, I wrote an article titled Bishop Loras: A Public Historian’s View (Kelly 2020, pp. 5), where I went into detail about the critical nature of statutes.1 In this article, I further explained how a community must learn to interact with the artifacts in a manner that does not glorify their past while learning from them. Bishop Loras’ statue, therefore, needed to be removed as it was in a prominent place where his presence was glorified.

My article in the Observer, therefore, was not merely a criticism of the Lost Cause but a part of my larger interaction with historical monuments and the glorification that is present in them. Pushing people to consider how statues and other monument impact their ability to interact with historical legacies is pushing the envelope forward. Far from treating monuments as stagnant, it is critical that people consider the context in which a given monument exists rather than simply looking at the monument itself.

As to the issue of a neo-Confederate backlash, I would say that I was not responding to any particular person who promotes a Confederate backlash but attempting to provide insight into how backlashes to change can create new injustices. Much like the Lost Cause could be considered a response to Reconstruction, so too should we be wary of those who claim that we are ‘destroying history.’

Regarding individuals who revere these figures, I would have to know which group is being examined here. Are we referring to individuals who see it as a part of their relationship with the South at large, or are we talking about the individuals who utilize the memory of the Confederacy to support their agenda of a white ethnostate? If it is the latter, then I would say such reverence for these long-dead men are indicative of the prejudice of the people worshipping these figures and merits immediate and continuous condemnation.

One does not have to go too far back in memory to look at how the legacy of the Confederacy was used to promote and support violence and murder in Charlottesville. Additionally, whether or not someone reveres the monument for decent reasons does not change the larger historical context of the monument’s construction.

If my article seems out of date to some, I would firmly reject that characterization simply because the Lost Cause still remains. It may be dying, but it is still a theory that retains power in the minds of some, and it is far too dangerous to ignore it. Even if the majority of the public is rejecting the Lost Cause now, that does not mean they will do so forever or that the course can’t be reversed.

It is, therefore, necessary to continuously oppose and work to prevent any such reversal, and that was my intention in that article. I thank Mr. Sturgeon for his polite comment, and I look forward to his reply.

Investigators now suspect, based on witness statements, security camera footage, and other documentary evidence, that boxes including classified material were moved from a Mar-a-Lago storage area after the subpoena was served, and that Trump personally examined at least some of those boxes, these people said. While Trump’s team returned some documents with classified markings in response to the subpoena, a later FBI search found more than 100 additional classified items that had not been turned over.

Such revelations, if strongly supported, could be disastrous for the Trump administration as it bolsters another piece of the puzzle held onto by prosecutors as they seek to determine if Trump intentionally withheld documents after a subpoena was issued against the former president.

Previously, the Post reported that Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, told law enforcement that he moved documents around Mar-A-Lago on Trump’s orders, suggesting that the former president may have attempted to hide the documents from a potential search. Additional video evidence of the premises supports the claim.

While far from the only piece of evidence that may support an obstruction charge, the fact that investigators are looking into Trump’s alleged knowledge of the illegality of the documents being held in the first place, combined with the evidence that Trump personally handled those documents means that the former president may face additional charges as the evidence of his intent grows.

While not as high profile as in Manhattan, the case against Trump at Mar-A-Lago could hold more serious legal consequences for Trump and, if the case proceeds, could threaten his presidential bid.

Seeing as a grand jury was able to not only examine the evidence of the alleged wrongdoing but was almost certainly aware of the significance of indicting a former president, it is highly unlikely that the evidence against Trump is light.

While it may be difficult to get a conviction, the fact that he was indicted in the first place demonstrates the gravity of Trump’s alleged crimes, especially when he could face up to 30 charges related to fraud. Trump may not be convicted, but at the very least, he will know what it is like to be treated like the crook he is.

It is unclear when Trump will be indicted or even arrested. While prosecutors have been allegedly planning an indictment for next week, they have not stated an exact date, making Trump’s claim of an imminent arrest on Tuesday all the more curious.

Additionally, some activists who previously supported Trump in the January 6th uprising have seemingly backed off. In a Twitter post, Ali Alexander, who helped organize the “Stop The Steal” movement in 2021, stated:

“If you protest in New York City, you will be in the single most hostile jurisdiction in the United States. There is no law and order. You have no liberty or rights there. You will be jailed or worse.”

In other posts on Telegram, Alexander also claimed that he was “retired,” suggesting that he would not support any protest to free Trump from custody. If only, perhaps, to save himself.

While Trump may attempt to portray himself as a victim, and he may even gain the nomination for the Republican Party, the rule of law must prevail. Despite years of fending off investigations, Trump is not invincible and must be treated that way. Justice must rule, not a cult of personality.

The fact that she couldn’t define the term itself should not surprise anyone. Woke has been an amorphous term among conservatives whose objectives are less about describing actual phenomena and more about putting people into boxes that they can discard. Leftist YouTuber Ian Danskin made this point well in his video The Alt-Right Playbook: Never Play Defense (2018).

By up putting labels that can be used as an attack instead of addressing the original meaning of a term or the idea it was supposed to represent, right-wingers can avoid the discussions they find difficult to address.

The fact that Mandell was unable to define what she meant is just another example of the hollow nature of right-wing rhetoric. Nobody should be surprised, and even more, people should come to expect this hollow approach to politics.

In their report, Joseph and Walters note that Trump saw his polling improve during the Mar-A-Lago search and that his fundraising also improved, but they also note that should Trump face prosecution, he may face attacks by candidates like Ron DeSantis in the primary, putting him on a weaker footing.

But while a large number of Republicans seem fine with Trump breaking rules, they don’t like to lose—which could point to Trump’s actual weakness if he gets charged. The biggest polling dip in Trump’s support in years came right after his slate of candidates got walloped in the 2022 midterms.

And that points to a different kind of vulnerability: Trump’s legal troubles can and have actually hurt him and his party with swing voters, costing them general elections. And Republican primary voters do care about electability.

And while this is all well and good for understanding the internal party politics of the GOP and the 2024 election, it is sorely lacking in considering what a Trump prosecution means for the legal system.

This is a president that has consistently demonstrated that he does not care at all about the nature of America’s legal institutions. His ‘alleged’ violation of The Presidential Records Act is illustrative of this fact.

Despite hundreds of documents being classified, Trump felt entitled to take them and keep them away from prosecutors, hiding them in his office. He routinely destroyed documents while in office, ripping them up before agency staffers had to tape them back together.

Even when the state of the American democratic system was on the line, Trump refused to cooperate, telling former aides to defy subpoenas from the January 6th committee. It didn’t matter that his conduct had led to the insurrection or that the highest legislature in the country was threatened. Trump still felt he had a right to defy the lawful limitations on his political power.

And now he may face some consequences. Far from being a simple political issue, the possibility that Trump may face criminal charges in any capacity is a massive deal for the legal system.

Trump would be the first president in American history to face criminal charges of any kind. Not even Richard Nixon was charged for his involvement in Watergate, although he certainly should have been.

What matters here is not merely the political response by Trump but how the law has finally, after seven years of absurd conduct by Trump, decided that it has reason to bring the hammer down on Trump. For once, politics is secondary. Trump’s gross disregard has thoroughly damaged the law, and it is high time that its ability to hold him accountable is demonstrated.

Now is the time to be reminding the public how corrupt Trump has been and will be if he is able to hold office again. The restoration of the rule of law through a Trump prosecution is the story, not horserace politics.

While I am certain that these writers would never suggest that politics is more important than the law, the consistent focus on political forces and not on the law itself is damaging. If the American people are to appreciate the danger Trump represents to our republic fully, then the constant battle between him and the law itself should be front and center. Not the GOP primary.

Earlier last week, I noted how fundamentally deceptive and condescending Fox News content is, especially when it comes to the blatant and knowing lies that came from Tucker Carlson. But even with what was known about Tucker and his colleagues’ lies about 2020, it still comes as an astonishing admission by Fox News and its staff about how they think of their own fans.

The Progressive American

Tucker Carlson’s Lies about 2020 Come Back to Haunt Him

It never ends, does it? Three years later, the fight to claim some fraudulent election in 2020 still rages on, even as it flies in the face of every iota of evidence and reason in public life. That hasn’t stopped many from claiming the election was stolen or…

Read more

2 years ago · Conor Kelly

The fact that Fox staffers actively pursued a position of pro-Trump, pro-Big Lie propaganda despite them actively knowing that they were lying and that Trump hadn’t delivered on their goals is insane. It demonstrates a clear malice in how Fox staff and contributors view their audience and the nation as a whole.

That the body politic should be subjugated to lies that not only eat at the soul of America but at the soul of the very people who promote them for a channel’s bottom line is insulting. Not only to the people who have to defend themselves from absurd accusations with no basis in reality but to the very people who trusted Fox to give them the news.

That Fox, or any channel, would dare to insult the intelligence of its audience in such a way is outrageous and should drive every American to see Fox for what it is, a disgusting rag that leeches off the American heart.

After Trump lost, Carlson continued his pattern of insinuated wrong-doing by election officials, saying: “We don’t know anything about the software that many say was rigged. We don’t know. We ought to find out.” From fraud claims in Fulton County, GA, to absurd accusations of dead people voting, Carlson consistently carried the torch of election denialism. It is worth noting that the people that Carlson called out by name are alive and well, something he had to apologize for once he was caught.

The only nugget of dignity here is that Carlson never went as far as Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell.

Deposing a propagandist

But this string of nonsense caught Carlson in some hot water when Dominion Voting Systems, a company that Fox News had allegedly defamed for contributing to supposed voter fraud. Carlson was deposed in August of 2022 and by February of this year, texts released by Dominion’s lawyers showed that Carlson didn’t believe a word of what he was saying.

In a series of texts, Carlson raised concerns about Trump’s voter fraud claims, as well as warning that Trump’s audience could destroy Fox News if they didn’t placate them. In one text he wrote:

and in another, he warned that:

Carlson, unsurprisingly, also dismissed the claims of software tampering promoted by Fox’s Maria Bartiromo, referring to the claims as “absurd” in additional texts. But even with his private reservations, Carlson said nothing.

Nobody should be surprised by the idea that Carlson spread some of these ideas or that he has ignored responsibility for them under the veneer of asking questions.

What Americans should be surprised by, and infuriated by, is the absurd degree to which Carlson was willing to go to lie about them even though he knew the claims were garbage. The fact that he cared more about his ratings and the stability of his station than the stability of the American republic is insane. If there is any justice in this world, Dominion’s lawsuit will tear Fox News apart, or at the very least, keep Carlson in line.

If a governor or even a state legislature can determine when and where people are able to learn, even as adults, about specific subjects of public life, then it stands to reason that they can control the very ideas that could be used to criticize them and remove them from power. So long as there are no legal protections in place to prevent this authoritarian garbage, more people are going to suffer and our republic will suffer with them.

Such a position is, of course, unpopular. That unpopularity inevitably forced the GOP-controlled House to respond immediately, screaming at the President in the middle of his speech, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) screaming at the president and calling him a liar.

Republicans should not be so loud in their protests or accusations, as their statements on Social Security and Medicare are all public knowledge. Florida Senator Rick Scott proposed that very plan with his so-called “plan to rescue America.” Under this plan, all legislation would have to be voted on again by Congress after five years after its original passage.

While the proposal itself does not mention either Social Security or Medicare, the fact that no exemption exists for either program means that Senator Scott’s proposal would effectively allow for the sunsetting of these two incredibly important programs. Nor was Senator Scott the only Republican to support a similar goal.

The Republican Study Committee released its budget plan titled Blueprint to Save America, which proposed raising the age of eligibility for Medicare from 65 to 67, along with recommendations to cut funding for disabled Americans. Not to mention they proposed increasing the age of eligibility for Social Security to 69.

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) also feigned anger at the idea that he would want to get rid of Social Security, but as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes pointed out, Lee himself has been caught on camera saying that his long-term goal is to phase out Social Security, and to “pull it out by its roots.”

This isn’t to say that all Republicans want this to be the direction that the GOP follows. Both of these programs are incredibly popular and would be electorally dangerous for any party to attack, but Biden didn’t claim it was a majority of the GOP—he argued that it was some of the Republican Caucus, and yet, the GOP still threw a fit.

This is not the first time that Republicans have heckled President Biden during his state of the Union address. In 2022, representatives Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Greene both heckled Biden, with Boebert going out of her way to accuse Biden of killing thirteen service members during the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. It is worth noting that she did this while the President was referring to his son’s death and his service to the country.

Some point to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to rip Trump’s speech after his 2020 State of the Union as equally disrespectful as the heckling that Presiden Biden has endured in the last two speeches he gave before Congress. That is an absurd proposition.

Aside from being a distraction from the content of the GOP’s failed policy-making, the comparison is insulting to the public. The GOP’s response to Biden correctly calling out their attempts to rob the American public of services they pay for, which would harm millions of Americans, is far worse than a pointless attempt by Pelosi to appeal to her own base. And it is certainly not comparable to accusing the President of murdering service members while he is referencing his dead son. Millions of people could be harmed by the GOP’s policy-making. Nobody was hurt by Pelosi ripping up a piece of paper.

Biden’s speech and the GOP’s pathetic response to it demonstrate the fundamental dysfunction within the Republican Party. They could have come to Congress with a legitimate proposal for change for Biden to work with, but instead, they have embraced conspiracism and austerity politics. Say what you will about Biden, but he hit the GOP where at its core, and they deserved it.

Republished article from original Progressive American Website, dated February 9, 2023.