The Draft: Why It's Far From Unlikely

You can't throw a stick without hitting someone explaining why a military draft isn't going to happen. "Suicide for the Republican Party," they'll tell you with a perfectly straight face and utmost sincerity, as though the monolithic hydra we call the GOP actually "thinks" like a real, live human being.

They're partly right and mostly wrong, these rueful analysts who have given the issue much serious consideration.

Self-destruction is not on the hydra's To Do List. Yet, somehow, The Beast must be fed, and its growing appetite will not - cannot - be ignored. There are lies to maintain; delicate, elaborate, entrenched illusions The Beast depends on for survival; "resources" to expend and a bounty to claim as its own.

It has not been so easy, this empire business, but it's working out just fine for those who profit from the spattered blood, screams of anguish and lonely cries unheard in the stifling, claustrophobic smallness of a million dark, desperate nights. The widows. The prisoners. The orphans. The killers. The victims. How unfortunate. How sad. This is the way of the wicked world, say our lords and masters. Freedom is hard work. And it must be true - it is true - because it is what they tell us every waking moment. They point to the evidence and we nod our heads solemnly in quiet and not so quiet consensus. There is a cost to that "truth" and these are inflationary times.

But enough of these silly metaphors. Let's talk about the real world; the world of amoral human beings and the bureaucracies through which they dictate the terms of our existence. The world of treasure and trash. And fear. Lots and lots of fear.

So how would one go about instituting a draft without jeapardizing that stranglehold on power? There is only one way. With all this evil running amok, terrible things happen. And when horror descends on us like poison rain, we are sick with sadness and despair. And fear. Lots and lots of fear.


I don't presume to know what will happen, nor where, how or when. But I do know why - because The Beast must be fed, and it will secure its survival at any cost. The hydra's head we call the corporate media will proclaim it "the unthinkable" and in its aftermath, a draft will seem far from unreasonable to just enough people to make it work without exacting too a high a price from those who currently hold the reigns of power.