![]() The day’s events produced a martyr-Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to enter the Speaker’s Lobby of the House. To him and his movement, January 6 was a righteous attempt by brave patriots to take back an election stolen from them. Trump hasn’t so much resolved the contradictions as transcended them. Out of this murk, a unified mythology has begun to form. He praised the protesters for courageously fighting back against what he insists, again falsely, was a stolen election, but also criticized police for using excessive force. He praised the participants even as the riot was ongoing, saying, “Go home we love you.” He insisted (despite ample video footage) that what had happened was a peaceful protest-some demonstrators were pacific, while many others were not-though he has also falsely claimed that antifa and Black Lives Matter had instigated a riot. In the immediate aftermath of the failed January 6 insurrection, Trump flailed in his efforts to interpret the day’s events. Just as neo-Confederate revisionism shaped racial violence and oppression after the war, Trump’s New Lost Cause poses a continuing peril to the hope of “one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” But lost causes have a pernicious tendency to be less lost than we might hope. Most of all, the New Lost Cause, like the old one, seeks to convert a shameful catastrophe into a celebration of the valor and honor of the culprits and portray those who attacked the country as the true patriots. ![]() This mythology has many of the trappings of its neo-Confederate predecessor, which Trump also employed for political gain: a martyr cult, claims of anti-liberty political persecution, and veneration of artifacts. Elevating this banner to a revered relic captures the troubling transformation of the events of January 6 into a myth-a New Lost Cause. This flag was carried at a rally that became an attack on the Constitution itself: an attempt to overthrow the government, divide the country, and effect extrajudicial punishment. The pledge affirms allegiance to the republic, indivisible and offering justice to all. (Youngkin didn’t attend, and later tepidly criticized the moment.) Trump on January 6.” Attendees then said the pledge while facing the flag. At the beginning of the event, which Steve Bannon hosted and Donald Trump phoned into, an emcee called an attendee up onstage and announced, “She’s carrying an American flag that was carried at the peaceful rally with Donald J. The pledge at a rally for the Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin in Virginia on Wednesday night was different. For anyone above school age, occasions to recite the pledge with a large group of people are irregular, and the ritual serves as a good reminder of what politics is about at its best, no matter how divisive what follows might be. ![]() One of my favorite things about covering political rallies is that they typically start with a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
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