Got it. I was just curious how you defined it. Nice dictionary definition, by the way. Fascinating, you are describing Republicans way more than Democrats.
Nah, millions of people did that-- it was only illegal if you got caught. Really "dodging" was either going to a foreign country with no intention at the time of coming back (Jesse Winchester) or going underground (phony id, etc) or refusing induction. And there were so many induction refusers that it clogged the courts and most of them never actually faced sanctions for it. Most cases were dropped in the 70's just to get the dockets moving again. But otherwise, whatever worked was fair: "Sarge, I'm only eighteen, I got a ruptured spleen And I always carry a purse I got eyes like a bat And my feet are flat And my asthma's getting worse Yes, think of my career, my sweetheart dear And my poor old invalid aunt Besides, I ain't no fool, I'm a-goin' to school And I'm working in a DEE-fense plant" (Phil Ochs, 1965) Incidentally working for a "Dee-fense plant" -- Remington Arms-- kept my father out until 1943, when the AEF brass requested that folks like him be inducted to take the technical and clerical jobs that less than technically and clerically gifted men were doing, so that those men could be brought to the front; the defense plants were asked to train invalids, the overaged, and women to do their jobs. They wanted Dad not only because he could build a rifle from scratch, including the machined parts, and could read and speak German. including nuances-- but largely because he could type a legible report in less than three hours. They wanted a better class of what Bill Mauldin called "garrettroopers" having pretty much failed to train up the people already in those jobs, and wanting more cannonfodder at the front...
I remember when Charles Schulz wrote about Mauldin and Snoopy having some root beer. I actually had no idea Mauldin was a real figure. And I'd seen his work, just never looked to find out who was behind it...
One of New Mexico's favorite sons. The Bill Mauldin who created Willie and Joe was the same Bill Mauldin who was among the greatest editorial cartoonists of the 50's and 60's.
Wait a minnit...I thought Snoopy was from Arizona! By the time Charlie Brown got him he was already 2nd hand.
Lying on medical exams (and how would one "lie on medical exams"?!?) to avoid a government-imposed duty is NOT legal. Receiving a deferment due to a medical condition is legal. There is a huge difference between lying on a medical exam and finding a "loophole" to avoid service. Neither is great, but they are not the same. By the way, there is no evidence that Trump "lied" on his medical exams. It sounds like Did you even read the Snopes article that you cited? An article about Trump's deferments. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/us/politics/donald-trump-draft-record.html If Trump "lied on his medical exams," as you stated, I would argue that he "dodged" the draft. If Clinton lied about the reasons for his deferments, he is. If they used the rules to their advantages, they were "excising their privilege." Scuzzy, perhaps, but not illegal.
Not even Scuzzy IMO. Doing so while supporting the war, or doing so and then supporting the war in retrospect was/is scuzzy. But y'know, it was a scuzzy war; it was not merely possible to support the troops but not the mission, it was obligatory.
Fair enough. I meant scuzzy in so far as people without "privilege" could not use the rules to their advantage. Thanks.
For the most part they could, as far as I know. The student deferments weren't limited to prestige schools or anything-- and mine was a prestige school but had plenty of poor and/or black kids admitted under various "level the playing field" programs. The bar was higher for the poor and the dumb and the ignorant, but not impossibly so-- not as much as in other aspects of society both then and today. Of course there were some "champaigne deferments" like Shrubby got, but those weren't a major thing; and those were balanced by a lot of privileged kids who were out in black and blue collar communities helping kids find a school or a scholarship or if necessary a doctor or a bus across the border-- the system was gamed by those who knew how on behalf of others as well as themselves,.
Well, first, "underprivileged" people are lest likely to have student deferments, since they were less likely to be full time college students. Second, both Clinton and Trump used more than college deferments.
The White House always tries to control the narrative. The problem is that until Fox News, there has never been a new organization dedicated to opposing a President simply for being the President, not for the policies of the president. But, there was also Mr. "You Lie" in 2009, which fed into the anti-Obama, which was launched prior to his becoming president. Yes, not everything was race based, but then we never had a Black President before, and never had opposition to a President because he is Black. I think it is more complicated than that. I interacted with several people my mom's age who made a comparison between the Kennedy and Obama in terms of how photogenic they both were and how they both were able to play to the camera. With the way social media exploded at the end of the Bush II term, I don't think it is easy to say he was a celebrity president any more than saying Kennedy was (who arrived at the dawn of wide spread TV ownership).
You'd also not have to have a draft board which didn't hate your father (or grandfather in my case). Uncle, 2nd year in law school, had his number come up. But my grandfather had won the mayoral race as a write-in (he never campaigned, it was complete word of mouth) and beat out the head of the draft board. So my uncle didn't get his deferment via school. Fortunately, he got drunk 2 days before he was to deploy, decided to do some weightlifting, and ended up breaking his leg. Never deployed.
A few months back, I suggested that compared to older voters, younger people are in many ways more informed than older voters, because: -they aren't anchored to preconceived notions. -they have a better tacit understanding of what those policies might mean going forward 20, 30 years out because a) the understand the world, as it exists today, better and b) they're going to be the ones living them Maybe I was wrong making these assumptions...but maybe I wasn't. Either way, a couple people took delight in mocking them. Interesting study from Pew. It provided 10 statements. 5 of them facts. 5 of them opinions. Now this isn't quite the same thing as understanding policy implications, but I think we can all agree that differentiating fact from opinion is an essential skill when it comes to thinking critically about anything. 18 to 29 year olds were twice as likely as people over 65 to correctly identify all 5 statements of fact. They were also 2.2 times more likely to correctly identify all 5 opinion statements. Television consumption by older people is cited as the likely culprit. 15-17 year olds weren't surveyed, but it does beg the question of who you would trust more to digest statements, debates, etc to cast an informed vote in an election....the 15-17 year old or the 70-80 year old? https://www.theatlantic.com/technol...oiUzafyJ9RuiHIOmdA2Rh-_3yZqsVZ1vACoxvLjWexOa0
1. No it does not beg the question. 2. Frankly, given those parameters, neither. You might be able to convince me that a college student in non-remedial classes could, but that is a pretty small cohort.
Looking at the data, it seems that the first 2 questions (about facts) is what caused the big differences. The other 3 had basically identical reply percentages. You do see more difference in the opinion, 3 had differences the last 2 with practically identical results.
Young people may be a bit better in differentiating between fact and opinion, but I don't know that they are necessarily better equipped to understand all the ramifications of certain policies. Kids just out of college don't have much "life experience."
FWIW: this is a panel study weighted by actual demographics, ie, the 18-29 year olds will be representative of that group nationally wrt race, ethnicity, income, and education. 4-year college degrees are more common among the olders than 18-29s for the obvious reason that many of the younger cohort are still getting their degrees, but also because people with higher ed tend to live longer, so the uneducated herd has been culled a bit for older groups. Even if we were to assume that all 18-29s with some college aren’t “remedial level” college students but only 50% of older Americans with come college ed aren’t remedial, that wouldn’t explain the difference. Likely explanations: older people are overconfident and life experience can actually be a bad thing. @ceezmad You should read the entire methods section and report. They caveated the questions with “Regardless if if you think the statement is true....”. Then they asked people to rate them as true/false after classifying them as fact/opinion. They also had some additional questions they tested in prior surveys and breakdowns by age/party. One interesting tidbit: partisans on both sides are more inclined to misclassify a factual statement as opinion if it conflicts with their partisan beliefs (like entitlement spending and the budget for Dems). But, GOPers are much more likely to do so. Question: If you can’t distinguish between fact and opinion, how can you assess the ramifications of anything? How do you weigh evidence? The experience can become dangerous when it is less rooted to fact. It can also become dangerous when it’s based upon what worked in the 70s or 80s without regard to how things have subsequently changed. I’ll take an informed, rational 70 year old over an informed rational 20 year old, but I still trust them both. That’s the reference people use when they say life experience matters. The problem here IMO is that this is giving the general population way too much credit. There are more idiots among us than we’d like to believe. Among the less informed to outright idiotic, the 70 year old is much, much worse than the 20 year old though because they’ve become rooted to their opinions amd have had a lifetime to cobble together bad insight. Something I’ve observed running community meetings with different age groups on political / social / economic topics. People in the younger cohort meetings can sharply disagree, but there’s much less complete nonsense. Older cohort meetings can be complete shitshows. Just my opinion.