Marvin Mandell's blog

Hic Jacet Humptus - with a bow to the late William Buckley

Marvin Mandell

April 4, 2010

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king’s horses

And all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again

How much can a citizen expect of his state?

Before we rush into the breach with solutions that only create more problems, solutions like more welfare, more job-retraining programs, more touchy-feely therapy, in short, more middle class boondoggling in a mind-boggling bureaucracy, let us try to find out what caused the problem.

Addicted to war

Marvin Mandell

March 22, 2010

Kathryn Bigelow, the director of The Hurt Locker, claims that many men in Iraq and Afghanistan are addicted to war. If this is true, could it have something to do with the fact that GIs today do not face the endless bombardment from airplanes, field artillery, and tanks that World War II soldiers did?

I served in the 88th Infantry Division in Italy and I never met anyone so addicted. Had we met someone like that we would have considered him “Section 8,” that is, seriously disturbed.

Does that mean that many gung-ho GIs now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are Section 8?

Scott Brown's Win in Context

Marvin Mandell

January 23, 2010

To put the Massachusetts Senate win of Republican Scott Brown in context...

Our Run-Ins with Wilhelm Reich

Marvin Mandell

August 18, 2009

Both of us had been in Orgone (Reichean) therapy for most of the 1950s, and we still believe it was efficacious. Orgone therapy involves tearing down the muscular armor of the body's defense mechanisms - neck armor, jaw armor, chest armor, eventually pelvic armor, sometimes with the