Word: systemics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...system is the present Greek government, and the adventure is the extrapolation of an incident in Athens, circa 1963. A Spock-like physician-politician (Yves Montand) addresses an antimilitary rally. As he leaves the assembly hall, he is viciously clubbed by hired assassins as a truck simultaneously brushes past him. Three days later, without regaining consciousness, he dies. Officials immediately offer smug condolences about the "regrettable traffic accident." But a few bits of offal stick to the whitewash. A journalist coaxes a witness into a confession; an alibi springs an irreparable leak. The incorruptible public prosecutor (Jean-Louis Trintignant) remains...
...fairly hard to take seriously. That's not a new quality for the workings of the Selective Service System. It has always been difficult to realize than that system took its male youth to fight and die for interests that were incomprehensible or vile to many of them. The distance of this mighty bureaucracy and its indifference to what its recruits thought or wanted never quite ?bed with what we were taught to think as "American...
...same upper-middle class will be hiring the same hot young lawyers to win freedom for their sons, while the same ghetto class accepts induction like bad medicine. And the student deferment system remains intact. Confrontation with the I-A status is still postponed as it was before. until after graduation. The unofficial strings that post-graduates have pulled to stave off the draft entirely can still be pulled...
THOUGH we can only surmise until the draft calls come in, Monday night's drawing appears to be a barren and deceiving charade. And an implication that a "rationalization" of the draft (which the new system clearly is not anyway) justifies that draft is merely icing on the cake...
Monday night my birthdate came up second out of 366, smashing my hope of painlessly escaping a system whose purpose and methods appall me. I had seen the opening: parlaying four years of an elitist deferment with an unreachably high birthdate number, which would carry me until my liability ended. Instead, a random grab at pile of capsules has permanently cemented the alliance between my self-interest and my most detached political beliefs. I think draft resistance would have remained my political position after it no longer had to be my personal position. As it is. I'm not given...