But Trump's victory may mark the resurgence of the Old South in another more sinister way: The return of "racial amnesia."
That's what some historians are saying as they watch a familiar storyline emerge. Trump's triumph is now being roundly described as a revolt by white working-class voters; racism, sexism and religious bigotry had little, if anything, to do with it.
People making this argument are following a script first honed by another group of Americans who made history disappear. After the Civil War, "Lost Cause" propagandists from the Confederacy argued the war wasn't fought over slavery -- it was a constitutional clash over state's rights, they said; hatred toward blacks had nothing to do with it.
It was an audacious historical cover-up -- to convince millions of Americans that what they'd just seen and heard hadn't really happened. It worked then, and some historians say it could work again with Trump.
"It's already happening again," says Brooks D. Simpson, a leading Civil War historian who teaches at Arizona State University. "A lot of people are saying we're going to have to unite behind the new guy and forget what he had to say. People who feel that they are part of those populations targeted by Trump are going to be told by whites to get over it."
(snip)
How white America became good at forgetting
At first glance, comparing some Trump supporters to ex-Confederates may seem absurd, even insulting. But historians say both groups developed an uncanny ability to obscure the role race played in transformative events and to persuade millions of Americans to go along with the charade.
You don't have to pick on the South, though, to spot racial amnesia. Racism is embedded in the daily lives of ordinary Americans in ways that many forget.
Where Americans live, worship, send their children to school -- much of it is driven by race, says David Billings, a pastor who came of age as a white Southerner during the 1960s.
(snip)
A 19th century cover-up
The Lost Cause campaign offers the definitive example of racial self-deception. Before there was fake news, the Lost Cause propagandists were creating fake history.
Their timing was audacious. They didn't wait years to claim the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery. They started making those claims immediately after the war ended, when the physical and psychological wounds were still raw.
A year after the war ended, Edward Pollard, a Southern newspaper editor, published, "The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates." Former Confederate leaders began to amplify Pollard's argument that the war was over state sovereignty, not slavery. Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy, claimed that "slavery was in no way the cause of the conflict." Alexander H. Stephens, the former vice president of the Confederacy, argued the war "was not a contest between the advocates or opponents of that peculiar institution."
Confederate veterans' groups started to spread the myth at reunions. So did storytellers. The Lost Cause was recycled in early 20th century films like D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," "Gone with the Wind" and Walt Disney's "Song of the South." All recast the antebellum South as a moonlight and magnolia paradise of happy slaves, affectionate slave owners and villainous Yankees.
Why would so many Southerners embrace such a big lie?
Part of it was embarrassment. They had to decontaminate history by recasting what they did as a noble cause, historians say.
They also wanted to look good to their children and future generations, Civil War historian Alan T. Nolan wrote in "The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History."
"The Lost Cause was expressly a rationalization, a cover-up," Nolan said.
Not all Confederates bought into the deceit. Historians often cite what one astonished Confederate war hero, John Singleton Mosby, said in 1902 as the Lost Cause myth spread:
"In retrospect, slavery seems such a monstrous thing that some are now trying to prove that slavery was not the cause of the war."
Their timing was audacious. They didn't wait years to claim the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery. They started making those claims immediately after the war ended, when the physical and psychological wounds were still raw.
A year after the war ended, Edward Pollard, a Southern newspaper editor, published, "The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates." Former Confederate leaders began to amplify Pollard's argument that the war was over state sovereignty, not slavery. Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy, claimed that "slavery was in no way the cause of the conflict." Alexander H. Stephens, the former vice president of the Confederacy, argued the war "was not a contest between the advocates or opponents of that peculiar institution."
Confederate veterans' groups started to spread the myth at reunions. So did storytellers. The Lost Cause was recycled in early 20th century films like D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," "Gone with the Wind" and Walt Disney's "Song of the South." All recast the antebellum South as a moonlight and magnolia paradise of happy slaves, affectionate slave owners and villainous Yankees.
Why would so many Southerners embrace such a big lie?
Part of it was embarrassment. They had to decontaminate history by recasting what they did as a noble cause, historians say.
They also wanted to look good to their children and future generations, Civil War historian Alan T. Nolan wrote in "The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History."
"The Lost Cause was expressly a rationalization, a cover-up," Nolan said.
Not all Confederates bought into the deceit. Historians often cite what one astonished Confederate war hero, John Singleton Mosby, said in 1902 as the Lost Cause myth spread:
"In retrospect, slavery seems such a monstrous thing that some are now trying to prove that slavery was not the cause of the war."
The Lost Cause today?
The same dynamics that nurtured the rise of the Lost Cause are evident now, some historians say.
Those who deny that racism and xenophobia were central to Trump's victory are engaging in another Lost Cause cover-up, they say.
"Anybody who says that the recent election is not, at least in part, a racial event is functioning as an apologist, whether they know it or not, for white prejudice," says, Joseph Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian.
There are abundant examples of Trump's explicit racist statements. He didn't campaign in dog whistles; he used a bullhorn. He once called Mexican immigrants "rapists" and proposed a travel ban on all Muslims entering the United States. Even Republican House leader Paul Ryan once said Trump's comment that a federal judge couldn't do his job because of his Mexican heritage was "the textbook definition of a racist comment."
Trump's rise to political prominence was driven in part by a conspiracy theory coated in racism.
Trump led the "birther" movement that repeatedly implied Obama was an illegitimate president who was not born in the United States. The president was eventually forced to release his original long-form birth certificate to quell birther rumors. Trump's demands that Obama prove his citizenship evoked the slave era, when freed blacks were often forced to show their "certificate of freedom" to justify moving about in public.
(piece goes on for quite a bit on this issue)
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