With movements afoot to take down Confederate monuments and statues, one has to wonder if those Civil War re-enactments to start to die out? The Washington Post ran an interesting article about those rather harmless (because there's no shooting!) Civil War buff weekend hobbies. Civil War re-enactments are as old as the war itself used as a form of theatre using fake battles used for recruiting as well as giving people back home an idea of what their loved ones were experiencing on the battlefield. Now, the war buffs, especially those playing the role of confederate soldiers in these weekend sham fests, are feeling tension after the violence in Charlottsville. There's great resentment of white supremacists who attach themselves to the war...such as those in Charlottsville hiding behind the planned removal of the Robert E. Lee statue....to advocate hate. Do these re-enactments still serve any type of "educational" purpose now? Likely not...but as I've said before, we're not teaching American History in our classrooms any longer and I wonder how many people out there REALLY understand the complexities of what led to the Civil War. Check out Ken Burns PBS documentary mini series CIVIL WAR made 25 years ago. It's better than any class you could enroll in.