The Return of Conscription

On six separate occasions during its relatively short history, the United States has practiced conscription: forcing certain members of the public to join the military. In the States, we often just refer to this as 'the draft'. Ever since the close of the Vietnam War, Uncle Sam's fighting forces have been entirely voluntary... yet, as Ben, Matt and Noel discover in tonight's episode, that may change -- and sooner than we'd all like to admit.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show, Soldier.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
My name is Matt Hud, my name is Nola.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
They called me Ben and you can as well. We're
joined as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee
pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Reporting for duty. We're talking. This is a special one
to all of our recently turned eighteen year old conspiracy realist.

(00:55):
Here in the United States, we have a ritual that
might seem strange to outside. I bet, I bet all
of us recording tonight can remember it. When you reach
the age of eighteen. In the United States, if you
are if you are termed a male, then you are
required to sign up for something called the Selective Service

(01:17):
System street name the draft.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Guys, do you think I could suck a golf ball
through a garden house if I tried real hard? And
is that part of the ritual?

Speaker 4 (01:25):
It depends on how long the hose is Noel, but
I believe in you.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
You know, I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
It fullat level Jacket. Yeah, one of the best films well,
Vietnam War, up there with Apocalypse Now.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
I think it's tops, I really do. I think it's
it goes full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now and a Platoon.
I think people often malign Platoon, but I think it
has some really good moments as well. But Full Metal Jacket.
The thing that's so great about it is it has
this like story structure that really shows you all the
sides of what it would mean to be in the
military during a conflict like that that is, you know,

(02:00):
largely historically considered pretty unjustified.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
But in real life you had to register right when
you turned a team.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Remember it being a thing I was concerned about, yeah,
when I was younger, because I mean, you know, I
think I had to ask a teacher or something like
that what this meant. Well, already having a little bit
of knowledge through films like we're talking about of what
it meant to be drafted, but I think at the
point that we were all in high school, it certainly
was it was voluntary.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Well, Georgia, the actual something right.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
You have to you have to sign up for the
for the Selective Service, but there was no active draft.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
Right, you have to register. The onus is on you.
And if you don't register once you get the card
that shows up in your mailbox, your doorstep, once you
get that dreaded envelope, not registering will have serious consequences.
You can basically never get a federal job again, say
goodbye to training and assistance programs from the government. And

(02:58):
if you are an immage grint, even if you are
in the country legally dodging the draft, which we'll talk
about at length, and lead to the loss of your citizenship.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
And that card, Ben, that was the thing that people
would burn and protests burn the draft card. Yeah, and
you were talking about some Georgia specific stuff that it
probably applied to all of us.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, in Georgia, you got something in the mail that
just reminds you of how old you're about to turn
and what you have to do for the Selective Service
in the United States, the SS, Well.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
I think that was my issue. It's one thing to
know about it, it's another thing to actually get the
notice that you have to register. And I think that's
why I clarified. I'm like what does this mean exactly?
And the issue I guess is that it could change
TBD right very much.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
So that's a great point, Noel.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Just to point out on that card, at least the
one that I got, it mentions that it is illegal
to not register when you are of age and you're
a US citizen, and it can lead to imprisonment and
a fine. I don't know how much it was at
the time, but right now the fine could be up
to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars US.

Speaker 4 (04:09):
Yeap serious consequences. We also know that most of us today,
most of us tuning in, especially if you're based in
the United States, you're probably going to associate the draft
with the Vietnam War because a lot of people have
real life experience with that still, and it's been depicted

(04:31):
so many times in works of fiction like The Things
They Carried or works of film like again the excellent Apocalypse. Now,
but it goes so much deeper than that, and there's
breaking news. There's a growing concern. Tonight's question, as we
record on Monday, July thirteenth, twenty twenty six, will the
US begin conscripting soldiers again, and if so, what happens.

(04:56):
Let's dive into it. Here are the facts. We call
it the draft here in the States, it's our local
term for mandatory enlistment in the armed services. Most other
countries call that conscription right or mandatory service. It's been

(05:18):
around forever, like Mesopotamia level forever.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
Almost considered a civic duty, you know, as being part
of a society. You got to fight for that society,
which in a lot of ways makes sense, but it
gets complicated once we get into some real murky political territories.
But in the old days, I imagine it would have
made sense to a certain degree that you know, if
you want the comfort of living in a protected civilization,
that you may be called up to participate in its protection. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
It gets hairy though when we're talking about some of
the early empires that were doing this kind of thing right,
because the empire rolls through, makes up some new rules
and then says, hey, if we need you, you've got
to fight with your blood and your arms, and you
have to defend this empire that now controls and owns

(06:08):
your entire society.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
And you have to aid in us acquiring other empires
or in broadening the reach of our empire, so that
point it becomes a whole new thing, not just about
protecting you and yours, but about aiding in some massive,
essentially corporate takeover of the world.

Speaker 4 (06:27):
Right right, right, And you have to comply because similar
to the way healthcare is tied to employment in the
United States today, in the times of ancient empires like Babylon,
before they had a warrior class, like the Ottoman janisaries
of later Eras, before they had a military elite, your

(06:49):
health insurance job thing. Right, The connection for your rights
and rules and responsibilities in this society was something called
income il m. It was a conscription system that said,
if you want to own land, for the right to
own any land of your own in our empire, you

(07:11):
have to be a soldier when we need you to
be to your earlier point nol. And we know this
is true because it's literally carved in the Code of Hammurabi.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
And let's remember here that often when conscription is used
throughout time, it's used in what would be called in
emergency by the folks who are ringing the bell, right,
the ones who are saying, hey, hey, hey, everybody out,
it's time we need you.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
For this emergence, you to serve, right, yeah, and we
know this is very popular for empires historically.

Speaker 4 (07:43):
It's actually more the rule than the exception. If you
fast forward a bit through feudal Europe and the Middle Ages,
we'll see all sorts of similar systems. If you are
a peasant and you own land, you might be required
to look around your family and choose one guy from
your family for military duty, so everybody has to pay

(08:05):
a blood price.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
And in the feudal system, and maybe a Game of
thronesifying this a little too much, it would be this
idea of these lords calling up their banner men, you
know that are sort of the folks under them. In
that structure, they answer to the lords of the region,
who answer to the king.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
Right and when the lords of the region answering to
a king or attempting to overthrow a king also possibility, right, right, man,
when they fight or when they call up their troops,
they're all given. This often happened they were given like
a quota. Go back to you know, your little souzarain,

(08:43):
go back to the part of our area you control,
and don't come back unless you have two hundred people
with you. We don't care how you get them. Just
make sure they can fight. And if you didn't own land,
you were not immune to this. If you were a serf,
you didn't have much of a say in the in
the first place. The ruler said, jump, they had no
choice but to comply.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Well, before we had things like nuclear weapons and cold
wars and all that. I mean, the measure of power
was how many able bodied humans you could call up
at any given time.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah, and let's also remember that the lords are probably
still wearing their silken cloths.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
No doubt about it. They're not riding out to battle there, guys.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
They might ask some chain mill or some ceremonial armor on,
you know, and hang out on a parapet somewhere and
see you all off.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
Yeah, do check out our We did an episode on
Ridiculous History a while back on whether knights really wore
suits of armor and how it worked. But for the lords,
especially after a certain amount of time and aristocratic degeneracy,
they became ceremonial pieces. These guys weren't on the front line.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
Golden filigreed, you know, bespoke pieces that were worthy of
the station, not functional in any way, shape or form.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Yes, why don't presidents.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
It's a good analog man.

Speaker 4 (10:03):
And those portraits were exactly like the covers you would
see gangster rap CDs for their time, because they had
you know, they always had Nolan I. You were talking,
you and I were talking about this. It always had
like a little dog on the side. Well, sidekick, look
at my weapons, look at my jewelry. It is a
rap album cover.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Well, real quick, Matt, you're talking about the President's the
analogy between you know, the lords and the kings and
the presidents. I mean now it's in of suits of armor.
We just have suits. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
It was just referencing system of a down, one of
the songs they made.

Speaker 4 (10:35):
And we know this. We know that during the French
Revolution a lot of these nobles and rulers and aristocrats
did end up on the front lines because their heads
were taken from them. This is also right. This is
also where we see the first uh what we would
call the first like modern draft from which most other
draft systems.

Speaker 3 (10:56):
Set placed on pikes even know.

Speaker 4 (10:59):
Yeah, and an interesting change in the French Revolution is
that people were pressed into service regardless of their social
class under the old regime, and the us to be
fair caught onto this idea pretty quickly. We had something
like a draft back in the Revolutionary War. So far

(11:19):
up to now again July thirteenth, twenty twenty six, the
US has passed some version of a draft in six
separate conflicts, the aforementioned Revolutionary War, the Civil War Terrible name,
World Wars one and two, the Korean War, and the
Vietnam War, so only six times across like two hundred

(11:39):
and fifty something years.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
Well, ben to your point about France too, I mean,
with the lower classes also being called up to fight,
the cause matters, you know, at a certain point, I mean,
those lower class folks would go on to fight, but
not for those in power against them, you know, to
protect their own rights. So you do get to a
really tricky situation where the cause you're being called up

(12:01):
to defend is not yours and does not in any
way aid you and your family. Then things really start
to get iffy.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Let's stay on there for a second, because if we
look at some stats, I only have stats for World
War One through Vietnam War, but just with the number
of human people that were conscripted to war during these
wars within the US. And this is coming from CNN
via the selective service, like their actual data. World War One,

(12:31):
which is nineteen seventeen to eighteen, two point eight million
people got conscripted. Two point eight million people got pulled
up in this, which is just crazy to think about.
But then World War Two in the US, ten point
one million people got conscripted. Ten million human beings got

(12:53):
pulled into this. And when we're talking about you know,
why we fight, right, there's a pretty famous problem beaganda
film that the US government made called why We Fight
in a bunch of different parts, and we're actually going
to be using that for a video coming up shortly
for this show. But there's a very specific picture and
compelling picture painted for why we needed that number of

(13:16):
human beings to fight against Germany and then against Germany again,
and you know why the world was at stake? Right Then,
when you get to the Korean conflict, Ben and I'm
this is where we start to see that part matter
a little more. Is it are we really protecting the
world or a country or is this more ideological when

(13:37):
we're talking about you know, the country of Korea battling
amongst itself for ideological purposes, right, it's more ideological at
that point I think, I guess it is all the
way down.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
But and then Vietnam really represents this, you know, public
perception of that sea change, where this ain't really about
us as it and I don't want to.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
Go Yeah, I mean, that's that's part of why drafts
have always been controversial to one degree or another, especially when,
as we are saying, the overall public does not fully
support a conflict, and public support for conflicts history is proven.
There's an interesting correlation the better communication technology is with

(14:17):
the public, though more likely the public is to disagree
with the reasons for going to war, especially foreign interventions.
Right things are not happening on US soil.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Well, that was a big part of Vietnam too, because
there was more reporting on that. It was a lot
more transparent, you know. I mean, I'm sure that the
administration wasn't pleased about that to a certain degree, but
it was more that people really seeing what was going on,
and it made it a lot harder to hit them
with that propaganda piece because they were getting a more
realistic portrayal of what was actually going on on the ground,

(14:48):
what was actually at stake, and who was responsible for that.

Speaker 4 (14:52):
Yeah, they were getting in media arrests, video footage. That
was the huge difference.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
And yet still the United States government was able to
conscript one and a half million people for the Korean
War and then one point nine million people for the
Vietnam War. And it's still unfathomable to me that that
number of human beings went through the system we're going
to be describing today and then had to just go

(15:19):
get on a bus, go get tested, and then head
on out to a conflict, you know, half the world away.

Speaker 4 (15:25):
Yeah, and again for Americans, Vietnam is probably the most
well represented instance of this controversy. We know during that
draft period, a lot of people sought ways to get out,
either as conscientious objectors I think this rule is malarchy,
or I think this war is malarchy, or they moved away.

(15:47):
There's a great scene in the Phenomenal novel the things
they carried about people who contemplate going to Canada. It
was much easier to squeeze over the border back in
the seventies, or they would try to escape Mild Harry
Servis through embellishing certain medical conditions. There's the story of
I think it was Ted Nugent was accused Ted pardon

(16:10):
me if I'm off base here if I'm confusing you
with someone else. But the musician Ted Nugent was accused
of purposely crapping himself to get out of service. And
then of course you have things like embellishing medical conditions
like bone spurs.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
Yeah, and Ted Nugent of course also famously had cat
scratch fever, so that was also.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
I don't I you don't think that. I don't know. Well,
the only reason I'm sitting here talking to you today
and you can see me right now, is because my
father got drafted to the Vietnam War. When he went
in and got tested, they said, oh no, you can't
because of this health thing. You need to come back.
He got tested again, they passed him. So he went

(16:51):
out to a bus and as he went to get
on that bus, his name for some reason, we don't
know why, it was not on the clipboard as of
people that are to be taken for basic training. So
he got off and he didn't have to go to war,
and he was able to have children. So there you
go a lot of kind and.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
I mean, like in terms of who we're gonna get
into all of that, like the people that aren't qualified
quote unquote once they do get called up, but even
just the whole getting on the bus and having to
go to be tested, Like when you think about it now,
it feels like something out of a dystopian sci fi situation,
you know, like being rounded up and forced to go
to some sort of like you know, facility, Like I

(17:32):
don't know.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
It's just the reason why I'm emphasizing this emergency lever,
Like why the draft and conscription is such an emergency
lever is because there they wanted people like my dad
who was very young, you know, just getting into college
and still in his teens at the time, about to
turn twenty I think, or a little No, he was
still in his teens, and he was a college student,

(17:56):
like a liberal arts college student. And what the hell
is he going to do even if he goes through
basic training. That guy doesn't have the whatever the warrior
spirit thing that Hegzith always likes to talk about. He
doesn't have that, and you're just gonna put him out
there on the front line somewhere because it's an emergency.
It just seems it seems backwards.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
In a lot of ways.

Speaker 4 (18:16):
Yeah, it almost. It always brings up the dangerous sinister
implication of people being used as cannon father right in
shake and bake programs, and Vietnam obviously is the most
recent in American memory. The most recent example of the draft,
which ended in nineteen seventy three, but before then it

(18:41):
was an even bigger conscription scandal during the Civil War.
This led to a bunch of very violent riots because
their Draft Act was in eighteen sixty three and it said, look,
if you are twenty years old or between twenty and
forty five years old, you have to register for the draft.
But you only have to actually do this if you're poor,

(19:06):
because you can pay someone to show up in your place,
or if you have three hundred dollars, you can give
it to Uncle Sam and you don't have to do
anything after that. The problem was three hundred bucks might
not sound like a backbreaking amount of cash now, but
it was a huge amount of cheddar back in the day,
back in the eighteen hundreds, and so this three hundred

(19:29):
dollars price point by design was to help save the
children of the wealthy. They knew this option was far
out of reach for the majority of families for sure,
so it became a war of the poor go which
most hairshot. Yeah, golden parachute. This, these are serious economic inequalities.
The most infamous backlash was the New York draft riots.

(19:53):
Over one hundred and nineteen people died in just three
days in July of eighteen sixty three, and most of
the people who were affected by this were impoverished Irish immigrants.
There was also a culture war at play. The powers
that be said, you know, Irish immigrants who are being targeted,

(20:13):
don't question the system. You should find a different minority
to hate, and we think that minority should be African Americans.
So rioters even burned orphanages.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
To the ground. Yes, that's bad. Look bad, Look that's yeah,
you know right right, part's in the right place. Bad execution.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, Ben, I'm still thinking about that concept of you
could pay three hundred dollars and get out of it.
That to me is mind blowing, and I don't think
there's anything officially on the books today that's equivalent to that. Right,
you can't pay to get out of.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Well, not directly.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
In the early register.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
You can pay somebody under the table to hook you
up with the right diagnosis, I imagine.

Speaker 4 (20:59):
Right, Yeah, that's one way. You could also you could
also exercise a little bit of nepotism to get a
push domestic assignment.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Right, so it's like important to the war somehow.

Speaker 4 (21:12):
Important to the war or necessitates you not being in
the war. So maybe you get a posh position in
a federal level domestic operation.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Right dude, yep, okay, okay, So there is something like that,
but just.

Speaker 3 (21:29):
It's all off the books. It's all yes, underhanded and
this is this, I gotta at least respect.

Speaker 4 (21:35):
Or that they were right above board.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
Pay us three hundred and you can you can.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Go I mean I was gonna say, or Noal, it
has to be absolutely official, like it has to be
some kind of big time official position. That is so
in the open as you're talking about, Ben, everybody just
goes okay, oh no, I definitely can't.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
Go too important big defense.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
Just seeing that three hundred dollars, the equivalent now is
around eight thousand bucks, So.

Speaker 4 (21:59):
Have imagined hundred and seventy nine dollars in twelve seents.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, So imagine if you just had that like cash
line around kind of thing, like you had eight thousand
dollars you had access to right now, and you could
get out of it and now imagine how many people
in your world don't have that, right.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
I mean, it would have to be a more prohibitive
number if they're going to do it today. It would
have to be almost like paying for that gold immigration card.
It'd have to be like a million bucks or something
crazy that only the Mega Ridge could have.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
I think ten thousand would do it.

Speaker 2 (22:31):
I think I mean eight to ten thousand. I'm really seriously,
I think that's prohibitive. That's like a down payment, like
a huge down payment on a major purchase, right that
somebody's been saving up for for a long time.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
So I'm just I know, but this would be this
is like emergency stuff. This is the kind of thing
you would use your emergency fund, you would use all
of your savings to do. I'm just saying, like I
think most people would to save their kid from the draft,
would probably tap into every saving that they have, every
bit of saving that they had. So I'm just saying
the number for it not to be just everyone. I'm

(23:05):
not saying everyone has ten thousand dollars in savings. I'm
just saying there would be accessibility to that kind of money,
whether it be borrowing it from relatives or whatever. That
might cause a ding in the effectiveness of the draft.
But if it were higher than that, then truly it
would be that golden parachute.

Speaker 4 (23:21):
Here's another thing that would happen immediately in this economic climate.
There would be new operations that I would call freedom layaway,
where you have instead of a student loan, you have
to get the out of the war loan rightly, and
you just spend the rest of your life paying that
off with radacious interest, yes, at an egregious interest rate,

(23:44):
and it does not get discharged in bankruptcy. That very
well could happen.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
For sure.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
All of your purchases for the next year are pre
taxed somehow.

Speaker 4 (23:59):
And we see so we see the United States and
indeed all other countries consistently tinkering with this system. The
Selective Service Act of nineteen seventeen is signed by the
Woodrow administration as the US is spinning up to enter
World War One. We mentioned that earlier stat about two

(24:19):
point eight million people. I think it's important to realize
the ratio here. Two point eight million actually got drafted,
but twenty four million had to register. This is a
dark lottery, and it waxes wanes over time. The thing
that has a lot of people worried right now is
currently our SSS. The Selective Service system is on standby.

(24:43):
Congress can very easily just the switch and start up again.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
They might think about rebranding that name to a given circumstance.
I don't know THESSS ZSSS.

Speaker 4 (24:57):
Indeed, it means that if you even if you are
not a citizen, if you are an immigrant resident here
legally a non citizen, if you're a dude between the
ages of eighteen and twenty five, you are registered with
the system. You have to do it within a month
of your eighteenth birthday. Currently, women are excluded from the draft,

(25:20):
but are allowed to volunteer for service, and we'll see
why that is leading to a very nasty bag of
badgers in the near future. But I guess again, without
we're going to focus on the States because we know
that best for tonight's episode, but we do have to
emphasize conscription models exist in so many countries across the planet,

(25:43):
and a lot of them actually have a more hardline thing.
Countries like Israel, for instance. Yeah, both female and male
citizens don't just have to register for the possibility of
military service. You have a mandatory term in the army
unless you qualify for certain exemptions like religious exempts. Here
is the most popular there.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
Like I believe the actress Gail Goodou was in the
Israeli military for that very reason.

Speaker 4 (26:11):
Yeah, And I mean, there are little policy differences from
one place to the next, but what it proves time
and time again is that a significant amount of countries
all ran a calculus and they said, look, we have
to do something to make sure we actually have an
army when we need one. So ethics aside. Objectively, that

(26:33):
makes sense, but it also, you know, it makes sense
that the public would see this as an incredibly controversial thing,
especially if you don't support a war. I was looking
at a awesome guy in Nate Silver, an amazing analyst,
and on his website, his research indicates that as of
July twelfth, like yesterday as we're recording, only thirty six

(26:58):
percent of the American public like supported the idea of
the conflict with a rat fifty seven percent strongly oppose it.
And people don't want to die for something they don't
believe it.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
Well, I mean to the early versions of what we
were talking about, where it sort of makes sense, where
it's like, Okay, in order to be a part of
the civilization, I should be willing to protect it, you know,
to participate in its protection from outside invaders or you know,
bad guys coming to threaten our way of life. But
once you get into all these political machinations and these
like really nuanced kind of deals and international affairs, it

(27:32):
starts to become really ideologically driven and the justification for well, no,
this is that thing, this war is us protecting ourselves.
But it's just the circuitous path to that. And we're saying, like,
we're protecting ourselves now from what could happen if this happens.
It's that, you know what I'm saying, Like, it's just
it becomes so far removed from the original notion of

(27:54):
just we're here to protect ourselves from people trying to
hurt us.

Speaker 4 (27:58):
Yeah, Interventionist policy is always tricky, especially in purported democracies.
So in Vietnam, to your point, no big rationalization for
foreign intervention was it was sold to the public as ideological.
It was called the Domino effect, which I think we've
all heard of, which argued that in the Great War

(28:20):
between communism and capitalism, every country that agreed with the
communist model would lead to another country agreeing, creating an
exponential growth of communism. So that was our rationale and.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
Of red scare thinking just you know, I mean, the
big bad the boogeyman of communism, right.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
Yeah, And that didn't work. So we did a false
flag but the Gulf of Tonkin, and that that was
our Bella's causey yeah, yeah. I mean the last day though,
the last day there was ever a draft. A lot
of a lot of you in the audience tonight. This
is going to sound wild and far room from your lives.
The last day of the Vietnam draft was June thirtieth,

(29:05):
nineteen seventy three. Condolences to everyone who got roped in
on June twenty ninth. That's got to feel like a
kick in.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
The pants, dude, exactly the day before.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
What are your opinions on the concept of mandatory basic
training for every human being that reaches the age of nineteen.

Speaker 4 (29:29):
I think it's a good idea.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
I think it's similar to the idea of like presidential
physical fitness challenges in public schools. I mean there's a
certain amount of like preparedness and positive things that come
from I don't think it has to be combat driven
per se, but I just think there's certain I think
there should be some level of physical fitness requirements in
this country, and we can see the you know, the

(29:51):
downside of that not being the case. So yeah, it's
an interesting concept that I'm into it.

Speaker 4 (29:55):
It's an issue of national security and also a lot
of countries that do have mandatory service when you join
up for your two years or what have you, that
doesn't mean you're going to be in a combat role automatically.
There's so many logistical and support positions that enable a
fighting force.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
I think about our previous discussions of a lot of
European countries that have that six months twelve months basically
where you're conscripted the moment you turn a certain age,
or in Turkey, you go, you know, for several months,
and then you're done until you're possibly needed, at which
time you would be like fully conscripted back into the thing.

(30:34):
But you're trained now. I part of me really wishes
I had gone through some kind of basic training just
to have that knowledge, you know, or that because fitness
would be good, right, but you have to maintain that
and if you're gonna Let's say get this basic training
and then five years down the road you get conscripted
for an emergency, you may not be in that same shape.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
That's a good but you're talking about more of the
thinking behind the drills than like some of the strategic aspect.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
Understand this, Yeah, right, So if you do find yourself
in that position in its emergency, you at least can
hit the ground running.

Speaker 4 (31:08):
And we again have said it in the past, there
are a lot of things involved with health and physical
fitness that should be considered matters of national security. Right,
public healthcare is a matter of national security. That's the
only way it's going to pass in the United States.
And now to this point about fitness, we see some

(31:29):
long tail consequences on the horizon. Since nineteen seventy three,
since June thirtieth, the US military has been an entirely
voluntary force. And I'm going hard with the air quotes
there because later in this episode we'll see why that
is not exactly one hundred percent true. And we also

(31:50):
see guys, like we were talking in our earlier Strange
News segment this week, given the growing tensions in the
Middle Eastern sphere, in the East Asian sphere, the growing
habit of appetite for intervention in Latin America. We see
an administration that has more and more people worried, and

(32:12):
more and more people are asking, based on recent signals
and the news and from policymakers, what if the draft
comes back, what will it look like, how will it
be instituted? What does that mean for the future of
America and American families. Here's where it gets crazy. We

(32:35):
have been keeping an eye on this since the end
of twenty twenty five and thew and early this year
twenty six because a lot of people began speculating about
a return to conscription, a return from the draft to
the draft. A big part of this is that we're
seeing a lot of politicos an analyst in Washington and

(32:58):
military circles quietly working to modernize the current draft system
we have. So imagine if you're walking past your neighbor's house,
right and you know this guy used to street race
all the time, and you see them with their sick
challenger to keep it military, or you see of tinkering

(33:20):
with that stuff and putting all kinds of mods under
the hood, and you say, hey, are you getting back
into street racing and they say, oh no, I'm just uh,
just modernizing.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
So you're saying, behind the scenes, there have been for
who knows how long, efforts to streamline the system in
a way that if it were needed to be implemented,
it could be done more efficiently.

Speaker 4 (33:42):
Yes, that's that's absolutely the aim of the current administration.
There was a you guys, remember for a while there
was a press secretary, Dames Carolyn Levitt.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
Ain't she back? Is she back maternity? Well she's talking again,
saying real smart stuff. Yeah, yep, love her.

Speaker 4 (34:01):
So ted no notes. In an earlier interview, Levitt said
a draft is not part of the current administration's plans.
Dramatic pause ellipses, but also, our great President Donald Trump
will not rule out what we call any future options.

(34:21):
Fearless leader, I'm not really, I'm just fixing the car.
You're the one being weird just because I'm painting racing
stripes on my car.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
I don't see it happening. I mean, I know we're
not there yet, but it's just such an odd deflection
and just a way of just increasing anxiety. I mean,
I immediately googled, like, I'm forty two, isn't do I qualify,
And then it turned out there have been examples of
that a drange being broadened given certain emergency circumstances. So

(34:52):
it's not beyond the realm of possibility that were they
to flip it, and it were extreme enough situation to
require them doing that in the first place, flip it
back on that they might also broaden the age range.

Speaker 4 (35:03):
Yeah. I keep thinking about that eminem line while we're
researching this. I'm twenty eight or twenty three. They're going
to take you before they take me. We also see
it in Russia, by the way, which broadened some of
their conscription age requirements.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
I just had this image as you're describing this, and
you know, us being so old now at this point,
sorry that we are a little bit. It's fine. I'm
imagining all of these eighteen nineteen year olds getting conscripted
out of high schools and stuff. And I'm just imagining
all the kids, you know, like, look, and this is
not trying to be age just here. This is just

(35:39):
my experience of what I've observed. But all these kids
that are just this, I gotta do what.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
Fair, Matt. Now that's true, there's an attention span issue.
I think too. But also warfare has changed fundamentally, maybe
a little more in line with that on the phone mentality,
and some of those kids that are absolutely shredding at
call of duty would probably be great own operation and
things like that. So, you know, it doesn't mean the
same thing as it used to mean, because getting drafted
today wouldn't necessarily mean that you're quote unquote on the

(36:08):
ground running with a rifle and you know, towards the
enemy or going over the top. It might be more
likely mean that you're piloting some sort of drone or
you know.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
Anyway, No, if we're talking about millions of people, right
or even hundreds of thousands of people they get conscripted,
there aren't going to be that many drones right for.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
I'm just being speculative here, but I am curious. We
don't know what it looks like. It's a good point,
that's true.

Speaker 4 (36:32):
And to that earlier point, we know for sure that
certain technical roles, certain different moss that didn't exist in
earlier conflicts are going to be prioritized. And actually eighteen
and nineteen year olds are not usually the top prioritization

(36:53):
in the draft system. I mean, I want to go
back to this before we lose it. One of the
worrying things politically and domestically for this current administration is
that strategic ambiguity that will they won't they? Is it
two weeks, in another two weeks or is it right now?
Because I had a bad day on Twitter. That's why

(37:13):
a lot of the American public is definitely creeped out
and not satisfied with this. Not right now, but maybe
maybe maybe you don't know if it will.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
You don't know how on the table.

Speaker 4 (37:25):
I don't know if I will. Don't ask me if
I will. I don't know. That's scary, that's terrifying. Because
a lot of our Vietnam veterans in the crowd tonight,
and thank you for tuning in, you already know that
being drafted can absolutely up end your life. Even if
you're not in a combat role, even if you're not
continually risky serious injury and death, you are losing years

(37:47):
of your life that you can't get back. So to
hear of the White House, the leadership of the land
say there are no immediate plans, we all realize that's
a hell of a lot different from saying absolutely not.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
It's very flippant, very noncommille. I mean, I'm not gonna lie. Man.
If I were even called up to go to be
tested or to be in that system, I don't know
what I would do. I think I would pull the
rip chord and get the go back and be out
of here, because just to even be in that system,
just to even be pulled into that, that could be
life changing. And just the feeling, the loss of autonomy,

(38:24):
all the feeling that all of a sudden you're being
pulled into something that you don't support or that you
have no ideological connection to in any way, shape or form.
I just I think that would it would I would
be terrified just to even get that call.

Speaker 4 (38:38):
Absolutely, And it's understandable that terror, especially to the earlier
note about being glib. We can say is a political
point that at the very least the current administration has
some room for improvement in their bedside manner and their communication.
I'm recalling a recent or a time interview a while

(39:00):
with President Donald Trump. He was asked about Iran. Right,
This interview was all about Iran for the most part,
and he had a line that really stood out to
me and I think to everybody when he was. He
was being pressed on some points about the conflict, and
he said, quote like I said, some people will die
when you go to war, some people will die.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
End quote. That doesn't what an analysis, sir?

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Isn't it weird to think you get a moral evaluation
when you show up at one of these what do
they call him maps state? What is it called military
entrance or something like that processing stations?

Speaker 3 (39:43):
Feels like being amoral and certain parts of this discussion
would be a feature, not a bug, you know, and
the ability to put morals aside in favor of a
potentially incredibly amorl cause or conflict or a set of orders.

Speaker 4 (39:57):
And they considered for a lot of those evaluations in
the past. Please remember, folks, they considered sexual orientation as
a matter of morality. Right, So there were a lot
of loopholes, and there still are a lot of loopholes.
That's a huge problem with the system.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
Can we also just point out, I don't remember the
names of the group, but there was a group of
legacy commanders, former I believe, male military high commanding officials
who put out a video saying it's your duty to
deny or to ignore war crime. You know, you know,

(40:33):
orders that would constitute war crimes, and then the administration
said that's treason. Right to say that to remind people
of their fundamental duty to not do war crime is treason.

Speaker 4 (40:47):
That's and they're also in addition to concerns about how
many loopholes exist, there are also concerns, like you said,
about the morality of complying to war crimes. They're huge
concerns about how some demographics are inevitably targeted more than
others for conscription. And then we also have to ask

(41:09):
is this system really a lottery? The current one, However
it gets modernized, we think the current one is still
going to be like the Vietnam sss of old. They're
going to use a national lottery based on collected birth dates,
meaning that birthdays will be drawn randomly to determine the

(41:30):
order in which you are called for evaluation and potential
membership non consensual in our fighting forces. So they aim
for twenty year olds first. That gets prioritized first, at
least that's the way the old system was. After that,
it aims for twenty one year olds and then arrange
for people from twenty two to twenty five, and then

(41:53):
as the fourth iteration, the fourth step they call up
the nineteen and eighteen year olds. They actually don't want
them first for a couple of reasons. You know, pretty
understandable schooling, probably some cognitive development. Right when you get
to your when you report, like Matt was saying to
your MEPs, you get a medical screening, a physical and

(42:16):
admin screening, and that is the time when unscrupulous people
embellish or make up conditions to get out. That is
also the time when people who may really want to
serve might find out they have a condition that precludes
them from service.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
It's weird just the word unscrupulous there. I'm just you know,
people some who are aware of the system and the
machine and don't want to fight for it. Is kind
of the same as somebody who you know would be
considered unscrupulous there.

Speaker 4 (42:48):
I'd say unscrupulous is in terms of people who make
up conditions, medical conditions. That is why we're using the
word unscrupulous. Conscientious objectors, which is what you're describing. I
think there are different bag of badgers, and not in
any way, if anything, they are scrupled.

Speaker 3 (43:05):
All roads lead to rome. I guess it's all about
the outcome, you know what I mean, and like how
well you are able to pull it off. Your actual
reasoning for wanting to get out of it, I think
is not necessarily going to be the same. You know,
some people might just want to get out of it
because they know they don't necessarily have an opinion about
it one way or the other. So I'd see your point, Ben,
and differentiating between the kind of reasoning behind wanting to

(43:28):
get out of it.

Speaker 4 (43:28):
And there's not, by the way, the good news, which
will harp out a couple times here, there is not
currently a draft. The question is why is it so
easy for the US to enact conscription whenever it wants,
regardless of whether or not there is an actual war,
regardless of whether or not the American public supports the
idea of intervening in a conflict. The fact that lawmakers

(43:52):
are looking so intently at tinkering with the system and
modernizing it, it's a fat red flag for the critics.
We can't ignore that some modernization is probably necessary whether
or not a draft happens. It's been a while since
one was in play, so the current process has a

(44:12):
lot of problems, not just conscription, but the way people
can end up in the armed forces overall. I mean,
the biggest one, obviously we talked about, is that the
onus is on you. You're a newly minted eighteen year old.
You've got so much going on in your life nowadays
you probably don't write letters statistically, but now you've got

(44:34):
to reply with this one. And if you don't take action,
then even though the government could register you themselves, you
are going to find heavy consequences for not complying. It's
so nuts. It's like how our IRS tax system makes
no sense, right, Like, oh, we know how much money
you actually made and you actually owe and you say, oh, okay,

(44:57):
well can you just tell me and they go no,
you have to get yes. Then if you don't guess right,
you're going to jail. God.

Speaker 2 (45:07):
I don't know, it's not because of the voice, but
I just got this image of somebody like Ryan Seacrest,
you know, on a live stream on YouTube video or
something and or on Netflix, and he just got all
the birthdays up on the board and they are choosing
birthdays for the draft and it's just Ryan Seacrest making
a big like patriotic deal.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
Somehow, he's the presenter the Great Lottery.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Yes, congratulations September right, we congratulations September eleventh.

Speaker 4 (45:38):
Double whammy for you guys. Uh oh yeah this I
mean this is also interesting because other countries way before
now created automatic registration. It is not an impossible rubicon
to cross. This means the government would take your social
security info from a grand database or state driver's license

(46:00):
systems and they would just flip the switch. So you're eighteen,
you probably get a notice in the mail or heck,
maybe a text on your phone that just tells you
watch out, you're signed up.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
Now.

Speaker 4 (46:13):
Supporters do dig this. They say it's it's a huge
assist to compliance, and it also inevitably will give us
more comprehensive, talenteer level data about individual people.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
I would love to see like all of us draft
what that what that usage? Yeah would be or you know,
like your text alert or like congratulations you're signed up
for the strongest military in the world.

Speaker 4 (46:40):
Or then e wor yeah, I feel you even worse.
We would try to be cool with it, because we've
got a lot of like tone death hello fellow kids
language already with this ad. Yeah, I'd be like lmao, Broski.

Speaker 3 (46:55):
How come we don't have like Monster Energy drink sponsoring
the US Army at this point, I just seems like
we should be we should be getting close to that.

Speaker 4 (47:03):
We kind of do. I feel like, maybe not as
official yet, but I could totally see it. No, I
could totally some more private, private sponsorship of the military.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Yeah, speaking of military adjacent stuff, guys, thinking back to
the UFC now in the White House, there was a
recent fight with Connor McGregor over the weekend as we
record on July fifteen.

Speaker 4 (47:26):
Yeah, it did not go well for Connor.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
It was one of the most spectacular letdowns there's been
a couple in his career and in the UFC's like
run of having these like major this is the fight
that you gotta see. And then it just kind of
ends with and he like tried to do a jump kick,
like a weird jump round kick kind of thing, and

(47:50):
totally busted his knee, like on the first moment of the.

Speaker 3 (47:53):
Mash oh no, out of competition.

Speaker 4 (47:57):
He was trying to get to blood sport immediately, you
know what I mean. It didn't build up to it.
We also we also.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Know the areas save that for later in the magic that.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
I just imagine Ben I imagine that's the way a
lot of this will end up going down when eventually
the US military tries to do this whole thing that
we're kind of describing, it just it's like, all right,
here we go, and then it just kind of doesn't work.

Speaker 4 (48:24):
Very well exactly. Yeah, I agree with that the military
with that comparison. Yeah, there is one thing we have
to talk about. This is personally important to me, and
I think it's going to be important to all of
us tuning in. I know it's important to us as
a group or on the same page. There's a related
problem to the system that's not part of the draft,
but it is tangential. Remember how we use those hard

(48:45):
air quotes when we said our current armed forces are
entirely voluntary. I think that's technically true, but it's misleading.
Just leaving that statement as is is cognitively fraudulents. Yeah,
it's fraudulent. Yeah, because the ranks of the US military

(49:05):
are filled with young people who often had no other
options in life. It is historically common across cultures for
people who have disadvantaged backgrounds to sign up as a
way of escaping living circumstances. You're from a very poor area.
You look around, there are no jobs, there's no educational opportunity,
no economic opportunity. Yeah, you could say those folks in

(49:28):
those situations are volunteering, but they're doing it because they
feel they have no other choice. So the question then
becomes a lot of us still quarrel with this. Is
that actually volunteering when there are no other options? Uh?

Speaker 3 (49:42):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (49:43):
And it's called service? So could you use the word servitude?

Speaker 4 (49:47):
Right? Yeah, that's I mean there's some metamology in there too,
for sure. Man. I mean, even we fast forward the
modern day, right, Like I remember talking to a lot
of Vietnam vets who said, I, yeah, if I hadn't
have gotten drafted, I would have volunteered because there was
nothing going on in my part of Alabama, right and
college was out of the question. We're seeing the same

(50:09):
factors again. We're in a K shaped economy. That's what
the boffins call it. Socioeconomic inequality is skyrocketing. The cost
of living across the board is ballooning, property rates, cars,
household items, childcare beat me here again, Dylan and Jordan.
People are getting squeezed. We don't even have to get

(50:30):
into healthcare. There are people who join the army because
they could get room and board, medical treatment depending on
your specific role. You can also get high level training
that sets you up for a private industry career after
you do your bid. And it's the kind of thing
where the money is great and you probably could not
have had that training if you hadn't been in the military.

(50:53):
It's kind of like how so many commercial pilots have
military service, not all of them, but a lot of
them because it's the easiest way to get training for sure.

Speaker 3 (51:01):
And also, like I mean, there's the GI bill. There
are some positive aspects of joining the military. Like a
friend of mine, a very smart dude, struggled in school
though I belive kind of due to some undiagnosed mental
health issues. But then he went on to join the
Navy and it really did kind of give him some
structure and taught him a lot about himself. And then
he used that GI bill money to become a lawyer,
and now he is a lawyer who protects people who

(51:23):
are getting unfairly evicted and treated horribly by you know, slumlords.
So there is a path. There is a career path
that involves the military that doesn't always necessarily feel like
a forced move.

Speaker 4 (51:35):
Yeah, but again, is it volunteering if that's your only option?

Speaker 3 (51:38):
Right?

Speaker 4 (51:38):
And the GI bill is magnificent. It has changed people's lives. Yeah,
that's all I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (51:43):
I understand there's a myriad of situations out there, you know,
but you're absolutely right, man. I mean there are folks who,
because of lack of resources in our society and because
of historical things like racism and redlining and all of
the stuff that legacy inequality, then you could argue that
they don't have any other options.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (52:04):
Man, I'd go a step further. I would say certain
powerful forces are very happy with the inequality of the
system because if it's the war machine that baked in inequality,
arguably already functions as a quiet draft all its own,
and it happens every day in the United States.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
Grists for the mill as they say, Just so, cannon fighter.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
I don't want to deralism. I just had a thought
about the cost of becoming trained in combat in any
sort And I only know this because of direct experience
with my kids in just studying taekwondo, and how expensive
that is on a yearly basis. Right, And what I

(52:48):
have to budget for for that, And then imagining in
the same state, if my kids were just into baseball,
it would cost a fraction of that price for them
to get all of their meant to go and play,
you know, a season of baseball and do all the
tournaments and.

Speaker 3 (53:06):
All that stuff.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
It would cost a fraction. But then if I'm actually
trying to get my kids, like a in some small
way combat trained or aware in the things that taekwondo teaches,
it costs that much money. Sorry, if you're on Netflix,
I'm trying to illustrate with my hands here. But then
just imagining how much combat training you're getting by becoming

(53:27):
constricted and going into the military voluntarily or not, just
what you are gaining from that, and I wonder I've
been I've never seen it written out as like a
how much it would cost, right, or what is the
worth of the training you're getting when you're going through
some of the basic and then specialist training. I just

(53:49):
I've never actually seen that in a dollar amount.

Speaker 4 (53:53):
Yeah, there are some breakdowns. I don't know how accurate
they are, but they, as we can imagine, very widely
depending upon the specific skill set. So, for instance, we
have a good friend of the show who joined the
Navy a while back and is now I don't want

(54:14):
to be too specific because it's rarefied air, but now
this guy has been out of the Navy for quite
some time, works in Germany and the United States back
and forth with very very high level sensitivity submarine instruments,
and he technically works for a private company, but he

(54:35):
is one of the only guys who could do the
job because he's one of the only people in all
of the world's military who had this training. Right.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
So I think we're all just agreeing that there are
bankable skills that can come from military service, conscripted or not.

Speaker 4 (54:55):
And the question then is, yeah, if are you really
volunteering you feel like that's your only.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Option, and also how bad is that actually right for
your life if you're if you're involuntarily going in.

Speaker 4 (55:08):
I have a hilarious relative who was drafted in the
Vietnam War and spent two tours working at an ice
cream factory. He says he had a blast. He doesn't
work in the ice cream uh in the ice cream
industry today.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
As long as he didn't have a blizzard. That's trademarked.

Speaker 4 (55:27):
There we go about breeze. Speaking of sponsors, we're gonna
pause for one more ad break. We'll be back with
a problem that the system itself is very worried about.
And we've returned. Okay, we've talked about a lot of

(55:48):
the problems for the people getting sucked into the system
by hook Er, by Krupp, but we also have to
acknowledge the big guys, the big dogs, who are often
vilified and these conspiracies. They have problems too. If Uncle
Sam reactivated the draft today, and we'll check after we record,

(56:08):
there are still very difficult questions about how many Americans
will actually be able to qualify. The DoD came out
with an estimate and they said, if we took everyone
who was seventeen to twenty four years old male could
be drafted, only about twenty three percent would meet our
basic eligibility standards. We'd have to give the rest special waivers,

(56:32):
which do happen. But what they're what they're saying here
is three out of four of all the possible draftees
are not going to make the ordinary cut because of obesity,
health conditions, criminal records, lack of educational credentials, you know,
like no high school diploma or a good enough degree,
or they might have drug use or behavioral issues. This

(56:55):
is a growing, growing problem in a regular recruitment, even
without a draft. It's increasingly common or less uncommon for
someone to volunteer because they think it's the right thing
to do, and then they find out that they don't
qualify well.

Speaker 3 (57:11):
And I just wanted I was looking into this because
I wasn't sure does criminal record automatically disqualify you from
military service? And the answers no, And there are of
course also situations where waivers can be granted and there
can be specific exceptions made.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
Yeah, Ben, isn't it interesting that they include seventeen year
olds in their Department of Defense? Because they know that's
not officially what the SSS looks at. They know it's it.
Eighteen point six is the youngest person that can be conscripted,
like eighteen over six months into your eighteenth year. But
also they're taking out twenty five year olds, And I

(57:51):
wonder if it's just the idea of they're looking at
the window. If we were going to conscript these people
here in this window of time, they would be this
old at this moment, But seventeen year old. Most of
them don't have a high school diploma yet, just because
they haven't reached the end of high school yet.

Speaker 4 (58:04):
Yeah, like they might join JROTC or a similar program
to give them a leg up at a security an
officer status. That happens all the time. We've got relatives
who did that. But also, you know, it's the sneaky thing.
I want to be careful always say to this, It's
the sneaky thing that assholes do when they know they're

(58:27):
doing something wrong. They don't directly say what they're doing
is wrong even when they know. They try to slowly
erode the boundaries and exploit decent people while they're doing that. So,
like we see it happen in Russia, right where the
boundary of what was considered conscription aid kept getting eroded, right,

(58:47):
And the erosion of boundaries is one of the dangerous
things that happens in so many toxic relationships, and maybe
the US is in a toxic relationship with the military.
It's a good question. Yeah, to your point, without being conspiratortal,
I would say it's probably modeling based on like, we
have a seventeen year old who is in an ROTC program.

(59:10):
So when they hit eighteen and they sign up for
a draft, what's their likelihood of qualifying? You know what
I mean? So probably just trying to track fitness and
qualification over time.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
I hope, I hope.

Speaker 4 (59:23):
I don't know. I don't know. Haigsith hasn't texted us back.
Let's check, he said, lmao's.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
Also so peace, that's so peat. Yeah, such a joker,
such a silly, goofy guy.

Speaker 4 (59:36):
Another issue we're having, this is going, this is future facing.
Remember we said there hasn't been a draft since nineteen
seventy three. A lot of stuff has happened between nineteen
seventy three and twenty twenty six. People were born, people died,
people got new jobs, joined and left the military. In
twenty fifteen, pushed by a long standing arguments of discrimination

(01:00:03):
and sexism, the Pentagon opened all combat roles to women,
and a few years later, twenty nineteen, federal court said, hey,
the male only draft system is unconstitutional. This got turned
over on appeal. Scotis declined to make a call on it.
So back in twenty twenty one, so it's still a
male only draft for now, but a new wave of

(01:00:26):
conscription is going to bring this right back, smack dab
into the center stage under the spotlight. Because the Pentagon
ruling and that draft gender question pose really serious issues
about discrimination and prioritization and legality, dare say, tradition. So
we have we have a whole other thing that we

(01:00:47):
have to we have to wrestle with in the legal system.
They're not they're not ready for it, but they're still
even though they say nobody wants a draft, even though
they say there's not a draft happening, the mill Militaria
and the White House are still just in the driveway,
tinkering with that car, making it faster and faster every
single afternoon. Makes you think, just to bring.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
This in because we talked about it on I want
to say strange news a little while ago, because I
was getting deja vu when to talk about my dad
in Vietnam War. But the National Defense Authorization Act, which
is oh, such a such a fun thing to discuss
and try and parse through every year when it comes up.

(01:01:31):
When you know, national defense spending gets authorized by the
President and Congress and everything, and there's.

Speaker 4 (01:01:38):
Always fun thing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
Guys. I can't think of any major specifics, but I
know some of the major things that have been highly
conspiratorial in our world come up in the NDAA every
time it comes around, like stuff about warrantless spying and
the FIZ Accords and all kinds of stuff with FEMA,

(01:02:00):
and you know, some of these major topics, it's usually
that National Defense Authorization Act, Well, the one in twenty
twenty five, that's the one that changed the automatic registration thing,
where you know, in a lot of states you're automatically
registered at a certain age for the SSS uh. But
now it's because of this act, everybody's just gonna go

(01:02:22):
click click click, You're you are now a part of
the team. You didn't have to send anything in, you
have to sign any letters. You just get the notification.
And I suppose this is just a reminder that every
time the military budget comes up, to the defense budget,
the Pentagon budget, every time it comes up, there are
sneaky little things that get slipped into that bill, right,

(01:02:45):
and sometimes stuff that's not even related to defense.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
Oh yes, sort of like pork or whatever they call
when they sneak things into bills like.

Speaker 4 (01:02:52):
Budget consolidation yeap or uh, yeah, there's a word something
like that. I think it may start with a reconciliation,
budget wreckons. That's where a lot of stuff gets pushed through,
and we look, we know the thing is that a
draft's not happening now, but it's absolutely on the table,

(01:03:12):
and if it does happen, friends and neighbors, it is
going to happen quickly. So this is a message to you,
young conspiracy realist. Expect the best, prepare for the possible worst.
We want to thank all our current, past, present, and
future service members for their work. We know it's an
incredibly personal decision for people to decide whether they want

(01:03:37):
to volunteer for service. We ourselves have never been drafted,
but we have plenty of family members, plenty of friends
who have, and we would love to hear your thoughts
on the possibility of a new wave of conscription. Is
it good, bad? Forward against it? How will America handle
it in an age of technology that's groundbreaking, changing warfare,

(01:03:58):
increased internal division? Let us know. The one thing for sure, though,
is that if policymakers are planning to move like this,
they're going to keep it on the hush until until
it's too late. You're getting conscripted. Is the stuff they
don't want you to know until that letter arrives on
your doorstep.

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
Mmmm. Make sure you have your lighter, fluid and.

Speaker 4 (01:04:20):
Lighter ready, and we would love to hear your thoughts,
especially your personal experiences. Older conspiracy realist who did undergo
the draft period in Vietnam or in another country. Find
us on the phone. You can leave us a message
on the lines, and you can always send us an email.

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
Sure can find us on the Internet with the handle
conspiracy stuff or conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on what social
media platform you prefer.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
Do you want to call us? Our number is one
eight three three STDWYTK. Turn those letters into numbers. You'll
figure it out. Then give us a call and got
three minutes. Give yourself a cool nickname and let us
know if we can use your name and message on
one of our listener mail episodes to show up in
the audio feeds. You can find them out there somewhere

(01:05:04):
and not here on Netflix. And if you are listening
exclusively with your ear holes, why not check us out
on Netflix. It's pretty easy to find us. Just put
stuff in that old search bar if you want to
send us an email.

Speaker 4 (01:05:15):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet I'm afraid sometimes the
void writes back, We've been playing quite a game, all
of us and all of you. We will send you
a random fact if you want one, and we'd love
for you to send us one in turn. Right now,
speaking of things being in turn, our random fact for

(01:05:37):
this evening is the rotation of Earth is changing speed.
The length of a day increases by about one point
eight seconds per century, which means that six hundred million
years ago a day was only twenty one hours long. Andy,
kudos to everybody who lived through that. I don't think
there was a draft then, but it was a very
different place. We'll see you out here in the dark

(01:05:57):
conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.