The year of 2020 caused a lot of anxiety because of this year’s presidential election. Many Democrats, liberals, and leftists wanted Trump out of office while conservatives, Republicans, and Trump supporters wanted Trump to have another four years.

In the end, Biden ended up winning the election with a total of 306 electoral votes and over 80 million popular votes, while Trump lost with 232 electoral votes and roughly 74 million popular votes.

While many people around the entire world celebrated Biden’s win, Trump supporters along with Trump refused to accept defeat. Because of that, Trump sued over five states in order to prove that his loss was at the hands of voter fraud. In the end, he had little to no proof, so no changes were made.

On top of that many Trump supporters have taken to Twitter, Instagram, and Tik Tok, to relieve the stress of themselves and their fellow Trump supporters by saying that Trump is still going to win the election.

Although it looks like hope is lost for Trump’s campaign for some reason Trump supporters refuse to lose hope.

Considering the president has been accused of many controversial things regarding being sexist, racist, having over 40 sexual assault allegations, and there being no evidence of widespread voter fraud, many people would think to themselves, “Well why do they still think that Trump is going to win ?”

That is when the Lost cause era mentality comes into play.

Because the education system often fails to teach students about the flawed mindset of the South, who coincidentally also mostly voted for Trump. Many people who try to sugarcoat the old South will tell you that the Confederacy fought for State’s rights, but in reality, they were fighting for state’s rights in order to own slaves. Many factors played into why the Confederacy fought, but slavery was one of the main reasons.

When the Confederacy lost the war, the South and its economy were in shambles, but the Confederates could not understand how they lost the war because they convinced themselves that what they were fighting for was justified by God. But how is it that white people who tortured, overworked, and owned black people could possibly think that what they are doing is right ?”

It is widely believed that Southern white people convinced themselves that slavery did more good than harm, but still there is no logical reason why they thought slavery was good.

Ironically, the Confederacy was and has always claimed to be very religious. The South truly believed that God was on their side, so in the eyes of Confederates, there was no possible way that they could have lost the war. Because of that the Confederacy simply decided that they did not lose the war in spite of their crippling region. They all convinced themselves that this was just a part of God’s plan.

Since the Civil War brought up many flaws that slavery had that would not be obvious to a person who wasn’t living through it, the South planned to romanticize old Southern values and beliefs in order to deal with both the loss and their guilt. The South continued to support books and later movies such as, Gone with the Wind, in order to romanticize the old South while pushing out propaganda that made them along with future Southerners believe that the Northerners were in the wrong.

A lot of this work was caused by exclusive groups like The United Daughters of the Confederacy.  Members of this group are women who are lineal or collateral blood descendants of those who served the confederacy.  Historian Karen Cox’s in her book “Dixie Daughters” said, “UDC members aspired to transform military defeat into a political and cultural victory, where states’ rights and white supremacy remained intact.” In other words, when the Civil War gave them lemons, the UDC made lemonade. Horribly bitter, super racist lemonade.”  They helped push the propaganda years after the civil war ended which eventually led to a law being passed that only allowed certain textbooks, that favored the South, to be available for educational purposes.

That is why the romanticization of the old South exists to this day, and this is also why many people who support people or ideas that can easily be seen as problematic refuse to see their wrongs. It is not because they don’t know that they are wrong. It is not just because they are under-educated. It is because they refuse to educate themselves on anything that would go against their views while they sugarcoat or completely ignore their flawed positions in order to avoid their own guilt in the fact that they would rather support a controversial person or movement than admit that they are wrong.