This is really more Dennis G’s bag, but….
At South Carolina’s Secession Gala, men in frock coats and militia uniforms and women in hoopskirts will sip mint juleps as a band called Unreconstructed plays “Dixie.” In Georgia, they will re-enact the state’s 1861 secession convention. And Alabama will hold a mock swearing-in of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
[….]“The interesting thing about the Civil War, unlike almost any other war, is generally the victor is the one who controls the story,” Sutton said. “The Civil War is different in that the Lost Cause really was the message about the Civil War well into the 20th century.”
An honest question: does the Civil War dominate American politics today? I don’t just mean that American politics is mostly about race — although it obviously is — I also mean that the mining of lost causes for political gold is an outgrowth of the fixation with the ultimate lost cause, the southern side in the Civil War. I’m sure every society has a hankering for the good old days, when teh gay took place on the DL and so on, but I wonder if this hankering is especially politically powerful in the US because a whole quarter of the country has romantic notions of what brave southern gentlemen did when they fought in the war of northern aggression.