White Families in Peril

I wrote for POLITICO about modern political strife at the Gettysburg reenactment.

photo credit: Wesley LaPointe

(Great photos and the whole story is also in POLITICO.)

It’s already hotter than 90 degrees here at the 161st annual reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg in July and it’s not even 10 a.m. Cannons boom in the distance.

From the parking lot outside the mock battlefield — the real one, hallowed ground, is miles away — the reenactors with Confederate flags and the tourists in MAGA caps look a little Jan. 6 — menacing, combustible. Closer up, they’re friendlier, at least with each other, and the reenactors, whether repping North or South, are glad-handing.

The make-believe soldiers are all bearing the rising heat in miserably tight and chafing wool. This is true to the experience of those who fought the original battle in early July 1863, where it was so hot that one soldier saw “hundreds of men gasping for breath, and lolling out their tongues like madmen.” He concluded, “flesh and blood cannot sustain such heat and fatigue as we have undergone this day.”

I’ve been to the Gettysburg reenactment before, as a tourist, in 2016. I came with my then 10-year-old son Ben, who did musket training with a group of budding reenactors. We sampled hardtack. This time I want to learn about something more than just history.

The country is currently embroiled in a ferocious decade-long tribal standoff over some grievous offense no one can precisely pinpoint but that goes back to at least Donald Trump’s first campaign and, after his third campaign and second win, appears to be here to stay. Our modern American battle, whatever its origin, rages online and offline. You feel it at tense baby showers and see it in street brawls. It never takes a break. No one ever retreats.

Like many of us, I now take pains to avoid political showdowns, sidestepping friends who seem to be spoiling for fights about climate change, immigrants or vaccines. Or maybe I’m the one spoiling for a fight in these interactions — and what I want most to avoid is the chippy, implacable side of myself.

But the people here at Gettysburg go toward conflict. They are drawn to conflict so strongly, in fact, that they suit up, year after year, and drive to the battlefield to confront, and even act out, the worst, bloodiest and most fateful battle in the worst, bloodiest, most fateful war in American history. The obsession with re-experiencing trauma to gain mastery over it — repetition compulsion — has always fascinated me.