This… is just a weird story. (Reuters)
Is this something a man would forget? I knew a lot of fellows who had to register for the draft. They all knew their draft numbers by heart.
Curious.
I did not have to register for the draft, but many of my classmates did. I turned 18 a few days before the date that registration was reinstituted.
- First year it was under 300. I considered myself blessed.
And that’s my point.
I don’t know any man that registered who didn’t remember his draft number for the rest of his life. I just find it incredible (in the truest sense of the word) that William Barr would have forgotten he actually registered – whenever that occurred.
Yup. I was born in 1951. Forty-nine years later after it was picked, I remember perfectly well that my lottery number was 90. If I hadn’t had a 2S, I would have gone in 1969 for sure. (By the time I graduated in 1973 and became 1A, it was well above the limit.)
Any male eligible for the draft in that era would not only have known if he registered, he would also have known his lottery number. It was the most important number in your life after your Social Security Number.
Back to shit that matters:
The worst December stock selloff occurred in spite of actual hard data suggesting a recession was possible.
Today, the hard data was unveiled for all to see. Apple got crushed. Moreover, China’s worst economic performance in more than a decade has sunk Asian stocks. American stocks vulnerable to Asian disruption are now in danger of pulling back on investment. In short, we have a little recipe for a thing called…contagion.
HELLLLL YEAAHHHHH!! BAYBAY!!!
Maaaaan, take a breath, brother. Stop Waiting For the Worms. Stock market sucks, tariffs suck, people will learn, etc.
Hang in there. Remember, we still haven’t seen the report yet. And the House is requesting evidence on this and that… RELAX.
Imagine he already had an ‘out’ ready to go — something like unto a ‘bone spurs’ diagnosis, say — which he’d use, with a shrug, if his number came up. In that case, figure he could register, never really thinking it meant anything: with nothing at stake, he just takes a moment to see whether the number he gets is such that he doesn’t actually bother to use the excuse he’s got in his back pocket.
In that case, decades later, I could see him briefly forgetting that he was ever on the hook (because, well, he wasn’t) but then recalling that he’d registered (though still not recalling the number he got, since it mattered so little).
Not exactly. There are regular seasons with snow in the northern regions of the continent but every so often – the last time being so far in the past it has become legend – there is a super winter where everything freezes and ice-zombies come from the north. They were so bad a wall of ice 700 feet high was magicked across the entire continent the last time and staffed by an elite multi-kingdom force called the Night Watch. Winter is Coming is the epithet of the northernmost of the seven great houses but their southern counterparts look at their sunny clime (the show was filmed in Malta) laugh it off.
Donny Two-scoops is trying to pass himself as the head of that house, protecting the land from the [del]Russian[/del] ice heathens. “I knew Ned Stark and you, sir, are no Stark!”
It gets even deeper into theater of the absurd:
Now, I’ve forgotten a lot of the calculus and advanced statistics and whatnot from college, but I’m pretty sure that somebody who was born in 1950 would have turned 18 in 1968. Likewise, my historical knowledge is missing some of the details of the XYZ Affair and Jay’s Treaty, but I have a pretty good recollection that the draft was something of a Big Deal in 1968.
Since 1940, all males over the age of 18 have had to register for the draft (with the exception of the period 1975-1980). Those subject to actually be drafted varied, but you always had to at least register.
Even if for some obscure reason he actually was exempt from registration he had to know this was unusual and would require some explanation.
The King’s Landing scenes were shot in Dubrovnik, Croatia. You can take a walking tour there, where your guide will show you stills from the series (Cersei’s walk of shame, for example) at the site where filmed.
Something non-Clustery:
Oh no, that’s still a cluster. Webb is not a stable person.
Huh. Did not know that.
That’s a surprisingly non-horrible idea. While I’ve generally been opposed to Webb running for the Democratic presidential nomination for various reasons (and I concur that he’s generally not the most well-balanced person), this is an area of strength for him and he seems like someone who could keep things within the SecDef portfolio “within normal parameters” (to borrow PJ O’Rourke’s turn of phrase), something the current WH is desperately in need of.
Naturally, since it’s a non-horrible idea it won’t happen unless Webb can get the crucial *Fox and Friends *endorsement. And even if it does, Webb will be out with a knife in his back within a year.
But that’s the thing. Young men having an ‘out’ was a big deal, too, in those days. With all the coffins coming back to US soil week after week after week (we didn’t hide the return of the dead in those days), we were constantly reminded of the true high cost of war. Even someone who had an exemption could not help but be regularly reminded that he was one of the rare lucky ones.
It really was. I was 11 in 1968, but throughout those formative years from age 11-18 (1968-1975), the draft was on the mind of every young male I knew. As Colibri points out, it simply defies credulity that a young man turning 18 in 1968 – the year of the Tet Offensive – would somehow not remember the details surrounding his service – or non-service, as the case may be.
Exactly. Maybe it is something that can be easily explained, but I’m having a hard time coming up with what it could be. I’ll be watching his confirmation hearing, for sure.
The Other Waldo Pepper offers the only remotely plausible explanation (other than a serious neurological condition*) for being unclear on this bit of personal history – he knew his family connections would guarantee him a safe National Guard billet or a convenient bone-spur diagnosis or some other escape from conscription, so he didn’t have to think about the matter long and hard enough to form any long-term memories.
*Even that is an unlikely explanation – setting aside the fact that he shows no obvious symptoms, conditions like Alzheimer’s tend to leave old memories intact while impairing the ability to form/access new ones.
Just to remind all of us what a Very Stable Geniuslooks like: