Just the other day, there was a pro-police rally in my hometown in Connecticut and someone showed up with a Confederate battle flag, the emblem of resistance to the civil rights movement. While the organizers allegedly asked the guy to leave, it does speak to the continued resistance to efforts to make a more just America. It speaks to the fact that the symbols of white supremacy are quite comfortable mixing with the symbols of the police state. The Republican Ascendency from 1968-1992 was driven in large part by appeals to protect white America from lawless Blacks.
Professor Caroline Janney writes that Trump defeat in November could spin a new Lost Cause myth. Certainly that will be true in the fever swamps of QAnon and racist sub-Reddits. Trumpism will live on rural enclaves from Idaho to North Florida. However, one thing the Conservative Movement tries to do is erase its failures. Dubya Bush - whose incompetence almost matches Trump's, if his personal corruption does not - has largely been erased. They continue to lean hard on the Myth of Reagan, whose own racist appeals are buried by time.
Right now, Biden is leading the polling aggregates in enough states to win 376 electoral votes. Another 46 are within striking distance. If such a drubbing where to occur, then it will be difficult for professional Republicans to ignore the lesson. Trumpism might live on among the same reactionary rump that made up the John Birch Society and the Klan, but I think you will see Trump and Trumpism trying to be erased from the GOP history. Without needing to defer to Trump's manbaby ego, Republicans will not obstruct the investigations into his pervasive criminality, his ties to Russia, his idiocy, his incompetence. They will pretend he never happened.
We can't let them.
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