Is there anyone on DU-3 who lived through Vietnam War Era..whose life was changed by the DraftWar?

[Golden Raisin]

78. Born in 1949,

graduated high school 1967 and college 1971 so right in the thick of it all. Living through and coming of age in the 1960s and the Vietnam era in the USA was a totally life-changing and omnipresent force, the effects of which shaped me and remain with me to this day. Not just Vietnam, which tended to overshadow all else, but the multiple assassinations, the violence of the civil rights movement, and so much more turbulence, all of which belied and disturbed the post-WWII Eisenhower era, supposed dream of comfortable, middle-class Americana. My dad was a WWII vet who actually had a glamorous and exciting term of service (he was in the Glenn Miller Army Airforce Band) so I (and others) grew up with an inculcation of a “just” and righteous, anti-Nazi war (they were truly fighting Evil). That concept at first carried over into Vietnam --- many Americans assumed we would only be involved in and on the “side of right” in “just” wars. Propaganda against “godless Communists” was constant and prevalent and the line between Nazis and Communists was thin for a lot of people. The dawning hypocrisy, lies we were told and the harsh reality Vietnam unleashed on the public psyche, particularly in contrast to WWII, was epochal. It is impossible today to describe the influence and ominous omnipresence of “the draft” to those who never lived through it. It was a life-changing element with the power of the guillotine suspended over your head. I was fortunate and received a high lottery number. Unlike many of my contemporaries I never went to Vietnam. Instead I did what I could at home. Protests. More protests. Marches to Washington, D.C. and elsewhere. I was literally spat on by some American “patriots” whose visible hatred and contempt for young, protesting Americans (we were all “dirty hippies” even if we were clean and crew-cut) was deep, disturbing and dangerous. It seems that the great social upheavals and protests of the 1960s went into a decades-long period of dormancy while the country (including both parties) shifted ever rightward over these last decades. I am thrilled and encouraged to see at long last an echo and reminiscence or some sort of rebirth or renaissance of public protest, particularly by young people, in the birth of the Occupy Movement. I hope it will be sustained but seriously fear the Country has drifted way too far to the right and our electoral system and media is now so corrupt that it all may be too late.