Lewis McCrary responds to the Dish reader who challenged his take on fake battles:
I didn’t intend to suggest that reenactors are experiencing some kind of false consciousness, or on the other hand, holding seminars around the campfire. Their narrative of the war is often grounded in trying to understand the motivations of individuals, both good and evil, and thus relies upon some assumptions about why people go to war. This is a somewhat different issue from what the Dish reader describes: what strikes me as very conscious peer pressure to appear authentic. He may be right that this is a distraction, but I’m not sure it tips the scales toward the argument that reenactments are a pernicious activity.
Speaking of pernicious, a reader writes:
I offer up on Civil War reenactors in Germany, where the Confederacy is overwhelmingly the more popular choice. It's a reminder that there are often darker subtexts coursing through the popular hobby:
Among military reenactors, the chance to fight on the losing side or to struggle against overwhelming odds exercises a particularly powerful appeal. That, after all, is an essential component of the romance of Gone with the Wind; after exalting it, the Nazis found themselves forced to ban it in the nations they occupied, where audiences cast themselves – and not the Germans – in the role of the wronged. If even the Resistance in Europe was inspired to identify with the South, why read anything sinister into the existence of German Confederates?
Wolfgang Hochbruck, a Professor of American Studies at the University of Freiburg and a Union reenactor, is less charitable. "I think some of the Confederate reenactors in Germany are acting out Nazi fantasies of racial superiority," he told author Tony Horwitz. "They are obsessed with your war because they cannot celebrate their own vanquished racists." It's an unsettling thought.
Switching gears and wars, check out a great radio piece by Laura Nahmias ("War Games") about Iraq veterans and veteran wannabes performing reenactments with airsoft guns on military bases, reenactments that are encouraged by the Army as a means for recruitment. Text version of the story here. An excerpt central to the thread:
The Green Mountain Rangers aren’t exactly the kind of guys who re-do Gettysburg on the weekends but what they’re doing is something similar. … It’s a sensitive subject because the motivations aren’t always clear. Rationale is often provided in the form of honoring history, but what the guys are reluctant to talk about is the ways in which, if they are vets, the act of redoing it makes them feel…better. And, if they’ve never been in a war, its an opportunity to engage in a defining act of manhood. Paul, the quiet, brooding "Ronin," has a backstory like this. S2 tells me his parents wouldn’t let Ronin join military until after he’d completed college. By the time he graduated, joining seemed like a death wish. "He missed his chance."
Another money quote:
Here at Fort Hamilton, [Special Agent Brian Liebelt] lives a self-imposed Spartan existence in the land of plenty, mere miles away from DiFara Pizza and Madison Avenue. There is nothing to decorate his office except a framed magazine cutout of John Wayne. "It used to be Donald Rumsfeld," he says, with a sharp, testing look at me. "Now, I think John Wayne is a better hero."
The Dish 