Made the mistake of trying to deal with a "troll" on FB today. One of my FB friends made a comment about the military record, or lack of a record, of the curerent occupant, And of course some of the rest of us had take the bit in our teeth and attempt to answer him. I suspect some of you are familiar with the type. They take the part of your comment you consider to be the least important and answer that. Of ten as insultingly as possible while ignoring the part of the comment YOU thought was the important part. What it seemed to boil down to was this. If you haven't served in the military you do not have the right to comment on the lack of the current occupant's record.
Well heck. The Twitter champion in the White House has despareged serving troops and vets often enough. Losers. Suckers. John McCain wasn't a hero because he was a POW. The current occupant had four student deferments and one for "bone spurs." Let's look at the possibilities for service. As a college graduate he probably would have been eligible for OCS. As a graduate he probably could have qualified to apply to one of the voluntary services, navy, air force. Coast Guard. I'm not even going the mention the marines in the same sentence as this individual.
Even if he had been drafted into the army the chances of the son of a powerful, wealthy, businessman from NYC slogging through the swamps of Viet Nam much less even ending up in SE Asia would have been next to zero.
Even though the person who shall remain nameless has university degrees he has gone to great lengths to keep his transcripts, all his transcripts, secret. including threatening to sue any school who releases them. Even draftees had to take aptitude tests. Did his family realize that he would probably flunk. If he passsed the tests would he even be able to complete basic training for any branch of the service? Bone spurs probably looked like a quick and easy out at the time. A record that probably would never see the light of day. Well it did.
His attitude towward serving. He has basically said "it wasn't his bag." Or words to that effect. And that avoiding STD"s were his personal Viet Nam. Anyone want to give odds on his chances for survival if he had joined the army, gone to OCS, been commissioned as a second lieutenant and been assigned to an actual foot slogging command. His own men just might have fragged him before the week was out.
The bone spurs appear to have magially healed as soon as the Sword of Damocles of the draft ceased to hang over his head.
don't know if you can actually read this. Back during WWII all men from 18 to 65 had to register including the work they were doing. This is might great uncle Walter Heaton's registration card. He was sixty four and a farmer living in the NW corner of Oregon. Of course he was never going to be drafted into the armed forces but I suspect the folks trying to build a war economy wanted to know how many steel workers, electriacians, loggers and yes, farmers there were in the country.
My dad was called up. The doctor took one look at his bow legs and basically said "I don't know why the sent you in and classified him 4-F. His legs weren's good enough for the infantry but they were good enough to scramble around the coast range getting out the cut for the wood needed for the war effort.
fF
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