the draft 4

 I was going to begin this post with a riff on myself in Texas having left my heartland which had turned from the corn belt to the rust belt, Reagan firmly in the White House me doing a boring low paying pencil pushing job under the eyes of my red state overlords, and pondering the big question of the day, what was the lesson of  Vietnam.

Just to make sure I had my ducks in a row on this subject I googled the phrase and the first article was one day old and of course comparing Afghanistan to Vietnam. 

Oh hell I am not going to go through all this.  I offered history and an analysis, and all I got back was the Birchean refrain that the gummint is full of traitors.

We have been round about Vietnam many times and the discussion seemed to end whenever I asked Beagles what would victory in Vietnam have looked like.  I will ask it again and add a second part, what would victory in Afghanistan have looked like.  At what point could we have pulled out flags and heads high and called it victory?

And speaking of Vietnam:

And then it turned out one day that Fred's father was getting out of prison and had nowhere to go.  Prison, that was a little, you know, far out.  But this was Berkeley, we believed in prison solidarity.  Isn't that where many of our revolutionary heroes had gone to and come from and draft dodgers, and wasn't this where The Man shoved his enemies?  And wasn't he the father of Fred, our friend?

 The prison was in Texas which didn't bode well, and he was in for murder I believe which bode even less well.  As it turns out the father was not at all like the son.  He had a plan.  He was going to rent a camper, and pick up some woman who would look like she might be his wife and drive down to Mexico and buy a shitload of marijuana, and drive it back across the border looking like harmless tourists.  And we all cheered the plan.  There could be nothing wrong with bringing more marijuana into the country.  But we stopped cheering after he mentioned that once across the border he would have to kill the woman. 

 He looked up at our sudden silence.  What, and let her talk?

 So why didn't we kick him out?  I don't really remember why.  We may have been afraid of him, we may have believed that he was just a big bull shitter, but I think the main reason is that he was an adult.  He was older than us, and for all our overblown rhetoric about revolution, we still, when face-to-face with them, respected our elders.

Eventually he drifted off, him and his son and the bummer bummer guy.  I don't remember when or why.  I just added this little story to show how crazy Berkeley was back in its heyday.