James Carville used to be a fixture in Democratic politics and as a talking head on Sunday morning talk shows. All these years later, he is still is trying to remain relevant.
I came across this short video featuring Carville in which he attempts to connect his longstanding interest in the American Civil War and his disgust with the Trump administration and broader MAGA movement.
The video centers around a visit to Gettysburg, which in his mind represents a clear turning point not just in the course of the war, but American history. A narrator offers the following commentary:
In 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania marked a dramatic shift in the Civil War, one that eventually led to the victory of the Union and the preservation of the country that we have today. In James Carville’s mind, Gettysburg holds a viewfinder to a profound turning [music] point in American history.
After the war, the South hatched a mythology, the Lost Cause, that sought to turn the terrible defeat into a moral victory.
The Lost Cause is directly linked to MAGA, a movement that seeks to resurrect white supremacy. Today, MAGA’s influence is on the line. The thumb of the white tyrant rests sharply on the throat of liberty.
Of course, we are all free to find our own meaning in the past, but what I think is so interesting about this take is how unoriginal it is. Carville isn’t first to make this connection and, as I’ve said before, I find it confusing and ultimately unconvincing.
It’s a reductionist view of our history that tells us very little about the Lost Cause and MAGA. White supremacy never needed to be resurrected after the Civil War. It had always been present and not just in the South. Collapsing MAGA on to the Lost Cause ignores our collective past from Reconstruction through the twentieth century and right up to the present moment.
The rise of MAGA has very little, if anything, to do with the Lost Cause.
Carville offers his own thoughts on this in reference to Trump’s call to overturn the 2020 election on January 6, 2021:
In front of the capital of the United States of America on 6th January in the year 2021 at approximately 1351 hours, there must have been 100 Confederate battle flags being waved.
There were actually very few Confederate flags at the Capitol that day. The one photograph that we are all familiar with is Kevin Seefried holding a Confederate flag while walking through the Capitol Building.
It’s not at all clear that Seefried himself was thinking about the Civil War, the Confederacy, slavery or even racial hatred. According to * The Washington Post*, “Seefried said he did not intend to represent white supremacy or insurrection, merely a spirit of protest, by bringing to Washington a Confederate flag that had previously hung outside his home.”
As historian John Coski has shown, white Americans have embraced the Confederate flag for numerous reasons in recent decades. That, of course, is no excuse for Seefried or anyone else who chooses to embrace it, but it certainly complicates Carville’s interpretation.
Finally, there is this comment about Confederate general and Lost Cause architect Jubal Early:
I’m talking about the assault on the capital of the United States is directly related to Jubal Early. That’s how influential that Jubal Early is. The line between Jubal Early and January the 6 is not straight and much shorter than you think.
Jubal Early is alive. Don’t ever tell me otherwise.
I guess Carville is referencing Lee’s “bad old man” to claim that there is no difference between the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was “stolen” with the Lost Cause.
Folks, they have very little to do with one another. When I hear accusations about an election being stolen I am much more likely to think of the McCarthy Era or any number of other moments in time that came well after the Civil War and the rise of the Lost Cause.
There are a lot of things that you can learn about when walking the Gettysburg battlefield. There is the history itself, stretched out over the course of three days as well as its short and long-term impact on the course of the war and the broader trajectory of American history.
But perhaps it’s important to remember that Donald Trump is not hiding behind every stone and ridgeline.
What do you think?
