What if he dressed as Jason Voorhees in the local Haunted House for the Lion’s Club?
Durka, durka muhammad jihad!
I don’t reenact WW2, but several folks in one of my units do, and the general impression I get is that SS units are looked upon as being wankers. They are more interested in acquiring authentic goodies to impress the other folks in their unit than any serious work and period soldierdom. Wehrmact units look upon them as ‘Dugout Dougs’ for their penchant of just sitting around encampments when the mock battles are going on, and on the few times they show up on the battlefield the American units tend to give them a lot of ‘Special attention’ and do things that they would not normally do to the Wehrmact units who they prefer to stay friendly with.
Generally speaking, I don’t know of many reenactors who are seeking higher public office. I would say that putting on an SS uniform shows poor judgement from any politician, no matter what their ‘true intentions’ are.
I have the sneaking suspicion that as recreations go, this portrayal is fairly accurate.
This Wiking group is one of the “units” of the World War Two Re-enactment Society, Inc.
According to their website, there are about 40 American units, about the same number of German ones, a dozen British, 4 Soviet, 2 Italian and 1 Polish.
What would a reenactment involve?
LALALALALALALALALALALA! ALLAHU AKBAR! LALALALALALALALALA! click "BOOM* Okay, boys, good show. Let’s get a drink.
Well played Sir (must watch Achmed again later today)
followed closely by Kidchameleon’s “Durka, durka muhammad jihad!” (Team America always makes me laugh)
While there are exceptions and this is an oversimplification…
I think that any adult who simultaneously has a sense of mortality and still enjoys playing war games loses my vote. I don’t trust their judgment to determine whether or not to send my son off to be killed.
War is not a game. War is a tool, a necessity, it is many things. It is not fun. It is not a game.
Yes, I play video games, yep, paintball and lazer tag too. It’s a spectrum, and I’m not looking for your congressional vote.
This goes double for people who tend to play on the side of evil (Confederacy, SS, etc.) more than just playing different sides. While I understand that there are constraints, and acknowledge that this oversimplification leaves off Uncle Ernie who has a fabulous reason for reenacting some particular battle by some particular group of men, in general, I expect to hold elected officials to a higher standard than that.
You’d think most of the GOP would rather participate in War of 1812 re-enactments as British soldiers, since they’d get to burn down Washington.
How so?
It may be totally innocent etc. etc.
However, if you are running for government in almost any western power and there are pictures of you dressed up as a Waffen fucking SS officer in a infamous regiment and you took part in re-enactments then don’t be surprised when your political enemies use it against you and you are tarred with the nazi brush.
It may be unfair but it’s politics 101. Any side would use it against the other.
I haven’t read this thread yet, or bothered to read any of the links, or informed myself in any way, and I don’t who Rich Iott is. But I wanted to say that I saw a movie once where a guy dressed up and acted like Hitler!
I’d never vote for that guy, unless he was against abortion, then I’d have to.
I do medieval and colonial re-enactment (also SCA, but it’s not the same). There are guys here who do both sides of the Anglo-Boer War, for instance, and that’s cool. But if some guys wanted to portray a British concentration camp guard unit? We’d be all :dubious: & :rolleyes: . I mean, you don’t get people portraying, say, runaway slave finders or whatever in the ACW civilian groups…
…ditto the guys who wanted to portray blood-sacrificing Norse pagans in our SCA group. Again, :dubious: & :rolleyes: . Yeah, it’s perfectly historical, but, dudes!
I used to play SPI’s “War in the Pacific” with a group of friends in high school. Sometimes I’d play the Japanese. I don’t these days, but from lack of time and similarly inclined friends; I’d love to if I could.
Can I hold public office in your strange little world?
I wonder what the uproar would be if Lott was in a Tory RevWar regiment instead?
I saw some guy re-enact Judas last Easter. Then we all went out for brunch.
Of course not. I guess you could have made your post much shorter:
“I enjoy chess. Did that have anything to do with your post?”
You’re either being intentionally obtuse or you actually can’t grasp the difference between someone who used to play board games in his friends’ basements with someone who routinely dresses up as a SS/Confederate officers as an adult.
Politics is about courting the dumbass vote, emphasizing the shallowest interpretation of issues and demonizing your opponent over any and every misstep.
I have no doubt that much hay would be made if the roles were reversed.
Also, AFAICT, the only reason Cantor is throwing him under the bus is that Iott had pretty much no chance of winning. May as well look tough on Nazis, rather than supporting a “Nazi” who’s going to get his ass whupped anyway.
All I know is that if this guy ever runs for office, I ain’t voting for him.
The guy used to dress up like Darth Vader, for god’s sake! He must be EVIL!
I saw a guy re-enact a battle from the future, where robots developed artificial intelligence, and sent a killer robot back in time to help in their genocidal plot to wipe out all of humanity, and he dressed up like one of the robots! I don’t remember what happened to that guy but he tried to run for governor too.
Now that I think of it, I remember another guy running for governor that dressed up in a war re-enactment involving a group of elite marines that had to fight against an alien. He was okay though because he was on the good side, and died really early without too many speaking parts.