Is There a Draft in Here?
I was a young kid in the 60's, but I well remember the anti-war protests. The Vietnam war protests were in all the papers, on TV every night and in the streets all over America. It was an unpopular war for a myriad of reasons, but the drafting of young men might have been the bigliest detraction. Vietnam wasn't a World War where our very existence was threatened by a madman in Europe and one in Japan, as well. It was an unnecessary political war; business for the Military Industrial Complex, disguised as the patriotic salvation of democracy from the evils of communism. The draft lottery to me seemed as cruel and unusual as "The Lottery" in the great Shirley Jackson short story of the same name. Your number came up; you were gone. You might survive the Vietnam draft lottery- your individual death wasn't the point- and you had some options to avoid being shipped out, but those options were not available to all. If your daddy was rich a doctor could write a note ...