Reply #3: Wow, From what you've posted, I assumed that maybe your leg injury

[No Elephants]

had made you 4F.

I don't understand what you mean about Alice's Restaurant, but that must have been so scary.

During the course of the research that I did for the OP, I read that Mohammed Ali had originally failed the test on the basic educational skills requirements, but qualified after they lowered the requirements.

My question was not intended to go so much to what public opinion was, but to whether anything that the public really stopped the war (or the draft). I know that is conventional wisdom. And I believe that government would love to have us believe that because it gives us a sense of having some control and they love us to think we are in control. I think that may be a reason we hear so much about being a democracy, when we never have been and never will be.

I am just not sure whether or not the conventional wisdom is so or not. I have not made up my mind, though.

I have not gotten to the draft yet, but that bit at least I am fairly certain the general public had nothing to do with, except that perhaps the draft card burnings may have given the plutocrats ideas. I believe the idea behind eliminating the draft was detaching the emotions of the general public from whatever wars the US might want to start.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc7i0wCFf8g (George HW Bush: New world order)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byxeOG_pZ1o (same topic)

(Both the above videos are brief.)


Well, eliminating the draft and radically changing how mass media covers wars.

Not to mention that allowing the consolidation of media despite antitrust concerns was a stroke of genius.


I think they succeeded pretty well.

Media helps them beat the drums for going into war, instead of questioning why we are going. (If questions are raised, it seems as though it's to allow govt to answer them and, hopefully, put the issue to rest. Few piercing follow up questions, etc., yet looking as though you are doing some serious, penetrating journalism. Tim Russert was the master of that.)

Once we're involved, we hear precious little from the media about casualties, battles, etc. Nothing on a daily basis, that's for sure. George Steph is the only broadcaster I know of who even gives us a weekly casualty count.

Not at all the way it was done during WWII, Korea and Vietnam, when war news was in every radio and TV news program every single day.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0yhHHPc7IU (George Carlin--the "club" is coming for your Social Security. They want it bad--and other pearls of wisdom)

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-01-16/politics/36899872_1_barack-obama-key-economic-priority-items-entitlement-reform (2009 pre-inauguration interview: Barack Obama pledges entitlement reform.)