This week marks the six-month anniversary of January 6th, the day protesters broke into the Capitol.

It's not just that they broke into the Capitol. They were screaming that they wanted to kill Nancy Pelosi and the Vice President.

They were brutalizing Capitol police officers. They were carrying Confederate flags. It really is a window

into something very dark in this nation that I think is scary beyond just the events of January 6th.

It's been noted that Trump's big lie and the violence it produced is reminiscent of the lost

cause of the Confederacy, a potent narrative

of grievance after the Civil War, recasting the South's stand as heroic and patriotic.

Undergirded by racism, the Lost Cause Apologia would stymie reconstruction, justify decades of lynching, and throughout the

South prove as impossible to uproot as Kudzu. When it comes to art identified with the Lost

Cause, the silent film The Birth of the Nation, directed in 1915 by D.W. Griffith is probably the most famous.

But the song, the night they drove old Dixie down by the band,

maybe pop culture's most celebrated and misunderstood contribution.

Virgil Cain is the name, and I served on the Danville train

Till stormy's cavalry came

and tore up the tracks again

In the winter of 65

We were hungry Just just barely alive.

By May the 10th, Richmond had fell.

It's a time I remember oh so well.

The night they drove old Dixie down

And the bells were ringing

The night they drove old Dixie down

...