Memories of testosterone

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This reader comment was posted in response to a Maureen Dowd column on the NY Times and chosen as an Editors' Selection. (I've broken it into paragraphs for clarity's sake.)

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Bush is suffering from what I call, "memories of testosterone." I see it in many middle-aged friends of mine who were draft dodgers, AWOL and just plain cowards during the Vietnam war. As young men, they didn't use their testosterone when they had plenty of it and now, in some strange--but still safe--way are romanticizing combat and thereby recapturing the one way deemed certain in our society to prove their manhood. A manhood, I might add, that, with increasing age, gets further out of reach if abandoned in youth.

For years my friends chided and poked fun at me because I was "stupid" enough to obey the draft law. That all stopped about the time we turned fifty. Then I began receiving curious, if not bizarre, invitations. One friend, who went AWOL and spent 5 years in Canada weaving tree bark into peace signs, called me up and tried to get me to join his Civil War Re-enactment brigade: "We get to wear uniforms and carry rifles and mock shoot the other side. It's great fun." His enthusiasm for war games would have been amusing had it not been so revealing. I declined, claiming gout. Another middle-aged "peace-neck" friend joined the NRA and started collecting WWI weapons, and still another became an apprentice blacksmith at a Washington Army installation that forged officers' swords. When the four of us get together we--that is they--tell bogus romantic war stories and encourage me to tell authentic romantic war stories. I know some authentic ones, but none romantic and authentic. I can't of course. Those of us that have been there got the romance kicked out of us in about ten seconds.

My socializing with my post-fifty draft-dodgers is depressing. Much more so than when they used to mock me for going to Viet Nam. It's depressing as well because Bush reminds me of them--and vice versa. Could it be Bush attacked Iraq merely for memories of testosterone? To prove his manhood because he failed so miserably to do so when he was a young man. And worse, does he really believe he is doing our young military men and women a favor by starting this war? You know, could be. The only thing more powerful than testosterone itself is memories of testosterone. And that's because the person with memories of testosterone has the political power to go along with it. Bang! Bang! You're dead. I'm finally a man. Better late than never.

Mitch Luckett

?- Mitch Luckett, Brinnon, Wa

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That's kind of an interesting thesis, though I wonder if the author thinks that any of his 'friends' would be better off dead as opposed to annoying him with their war-like hobbies?

Too simplistic for my tastes but an interesting read nonetheless. Thanks for posting it.

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I oppose the massacre of American Indians, yet love western movies. There's a big difference between play games and actually committing atrocities.

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Sounds like manufactured experiences to support a notion that popped into his head while commuting to work.

I guess there are Vietnam veterans who have a draft-dodger or two among their associates, but three they see regularly, and who all have become old-age psuedo warriors?

Perhaps this is actually the case for this fellow and his friends, but if so, it certainly isn't common enough to support any sort of theory.

Furthermore, if these three "friends," actually exist, there sure isn't any reason to believe they are expressing memories of earlier testosterone levels. On the contrary, their late in life affinity for things martial seems, if anything, to be a result of delayed testosterone release.

Mitch tells us nothing about their early days other than they all dodged the draft. Were they Middle Linebackers in HS? Did they "rumble" with other local gangs? Did they even read Modern Mercenary? What evidence is there that they ever were flushed with a level of testosterone that they might "remember" and act upon in their later lives? Dodging the draft is hardly evidence of a hormone infused Alpha Male.

What is actually telling about this story is that the NY Times "featured" it. Any even slightly critical reading of this letter has to call into question its validity or, at best, relevance. But if your Editorial Board believes George Bush is oddly both pathetic and diabolical, and is generally down on all thinks stereotypically "manly," it's not so surprising.

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As usual, we're living in a myth making age. Glorious fiction is available on small screens and large screens--as well as in print and embattled screeds of discontented warriors have been set to music.

Walter Mitty was a domesticated dreamer, an introvert without a peer group.

Extroverts dream, too, both asleep and while waking.

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Noddy24 wrote:

As usual, we're living in a myth making age. Glorious fiction is available on small screens and large screens--as well as in print and embattled screeds of discontented warriors have been set to music.

Walter Mitty was a domesticated dreamer, an introvert without a peer group.

Extroverts dream, too, both asleep and while waking.

Who is Walter Mitty? Mitch or "his friends?"

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Noddy24 wrote:

As usual, we're living in a myth making age. Glorious fiction is available on small screens and large screens--as well as in print and embattled screeds of discontented warriors have been set to music.

Walter Mitty was a domesticated dreamer, an introvert without a peer group.

Extroverts dream, too, both asleep and while waking.

Not necessarily unique to our times--one of Twains targets. particularly in Connecticut Yankee. was Sir Walter Scott and a romanticism of war. Ambrose Bierce, a particular literate combat veteran of the Tennessee Campaigns during the Civil War, wrote many of his short stories strictly to dissuade the public romanticism of war in dime novels and newspaper serials.

The small box is more of a function of ease, and to some extent laziness. It takes more effort to read a page then to watch a tube?-however sometimes it can be used to emphasize the gore and futility of war, and abuse---The battle scene of the movie "Glory" is an example, so is the D-day landing scene of "Private Ryan", or the futile madness of "Letters from Iwo Jima."

My problem with the idiot box effect on romantic warfare is largely the lack of gore---the Hollywood cowboy effect, where the dead are killed without the gore---the human body contains about three quarts of blood?-somehow a body eviscerated by a 12 gauge shotgun is amazingly bloodless. Sometimes reality can be used, as Bierce did, do destroy romanticism.

Rap

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Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Noddy24 wrote:
As usual, we're living in a myth making age. Glorious fiction is available on small screens and large screens--as well as in print and embattled screeds of discontented warriors have been set to music.

Walter Mitty was a domesticated dreamer, an introvert without a peer group.

Extroverts dream, too, both asleep and while waking.

Who is Walter Mitty? Mitch or "his friends?"

His "friends."

Mitch knows the reality of war, and has no need to dream about the romanticism of it.

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DrewDad wrote:

Finn dAbuzz wrote:
Noddy24 wrote:
As usual, we're living in a myth making age. Glorious fiction is available on small screens and large screens--as well as in print and embattled screeds of discontented warriors have been set to music.

Walter Mitty was a domesticated dreamer, an introvert without a peer group.

Extroverts dream, too, both asleep and while waking.

Who is Walter Mitty? Mitch or "his friends?"

His "friends."

Mitch knows the reality of war, and has no need to dream about the romanticism of it.

So you, like the NYT, buy this shite of Mitch's. Figures.

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I used to read all the journals, dailies, around the globe.
One should read and ponder over.
I come to the conclussion that most of the
USA's embedded easy-chair intellectual are not critcal enough to expose the hypocracy
of the corporate criminals.
(neither WP, NYT nor any tome dick and harry tabloids.)

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And what in heavens name does that have to do with this thread?

And is Germany really any better? The paper that sells 10 times more than any other there is a tabloid rag, and for every Sueddeutsche Zeitung you have a Welt or a Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Talking about easy-chair intellectuals.. You only ever offer up empty slogans and sweeping generalisations. Have you ever argued anything in any kind of specifics? Like, actually argued it, rather than just post a couple of sentences about what "America" or "the rest of the world" are like, in general?

If it's a language problem, by all means post in German. Just one coherent, specific, in-depth post, rather than a few lines of platitudes.

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nimh wrote:

Talking about easy-chair intellectuals.. You only ever offer up empty slogans and sweeping generalisations. Have you ever argued anything in any kind of specifics? Like, actually argued it, rather than just post a couple of sentences about what "America" or "the rest of the world" are like, in general?

If it's a language problem, by all means post in German. Just one coherent, specific, in-depth post, rather than a few lines of platitudes.

If you drive by this thread, Ramafuchs, I'd be interested, too...

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nimh wrote:

And what in heavens name does that have to do with this thread?

And is Germany really any better? The paper that sells 10 times more than any other there is a tabloid rag, and for every Sueddeutsche Zeitung you have a Welt or a Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Talking about easy-chair intellectuals.. You only ever offer up empty slogans and sweeping generalisations. Have you ever argued anything in any kind of specifics? Like, actually argued it, rather than just post a couple of sentences about what "America" or "the rest of the world" are like, in general?

If it's a language problem, by all means post in German. Just one coherent, specific, in-depth post, rather than a few lines of platitudes.

How do you have such a command of the English language, and all its colloquial expressions? You're Hungarian?

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Memories of testosterone

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