American Civil War Reenactments are horribly inacurate. Hell, any war reenactment for that matter. The glorious battles are reduced to pageantry, a veritable Mikado, enacted by drunken hillbillies clad in crude homemade livery? The 19th century was a simpler time, a great time, when any chap with a
capital saw was a surgeon, and any fellow with a stump oozing laudable puss was on the mend. Alas, one must have gangrene for an amputation. And one must have a real wound, made by real weapons, for gangrenous infections. Infections, it seems, are the real casualty here. With the dearth of dead bodies and the presence of sanitary portable toilets, the spread of authentic infectious disease
at modern American Civil War reenactments is negligible. You’d be lucky to catch a cold. And I ask you this: Is a war without Cholera truly a war? Nay. Therefore, I suggest a reality show where we go to hostile regions like the Ivory Coast, the former Congo, Iraq, etc, and pay the warring factions to continue their own civil war efforts while reenacting other wars. Ideological wars, tribalism, territory, it's all one big pissing contest and despite all the calls for peace, there are cadres of fighters who just will not lay their weapons down. I suggest we encourage them to continue fighting but with fully-functional period weaponry, employing classic battle stratagem, and all the trappings that go along with it. I feel that the brave warriors of Congo (and surrounding belligerent countries such as Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi) would bring the American Civil War into the present with the glorious gusto it deserves. Talk about "living history"! Imagine Antietam, rendered in its true resplendence. Lee against McClellan, Burnside, Meade, Jackson... Jean-Pierre Ondekane! Members of the Rwandan backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), and Uganda’s Movement for Congolese Liberation (MLC) would don the Gray of Confederacy against the Tutsi-Marxist pseudo-dictatorship Blue of President Laurent Desire Kabila. Brother against brother, father against son, Tutsi versus Hutu versus Moderate Hutu versus Tutsi-Turned-Hutu, etc. Or if you prefer a SCA flavor, howabout Sunnis in kilts with broadswords against Shiites as they replay The Battle of Stirling Bridge. All of this, live, 24/7, pay-per-view. As news networks become more and more entertainment-oriented, running the same twenty second loops of battle footage, it would be nice to see something besides a tank or burned out bus for a change. Like maybe a trebuchet. Let's take a weekend hobby and turn it into something meanigful. We could teach the children about the horrors of war while we're at it, make lemons into lemonaid.
[link]
|