Draft Dodgin'

Draft Dodgin'

By Brian Lancaster (March 2021, updated Dec. 2023)

Website: www.laughingcoyote.net

Cheech Marin met Tommy Chong in Vancouver, Canada while dodging the Vietnam draft. Tommy was already a Canadian citizen, and Cheech was from southern California and laying low. The slowly-escalating disaster of the Vietnam War confused the United States and caused the entire country to reflect upon its national identity. Meanwhile, people like Cheech Marin, Muhammad Ali, and Donald Trump found various ways to avoid this catastrophe, some methods more admirable than others.

1) Donald Trump

Trump's bone spurs started in 1968, tragically preventing him from defending the country from the commies in one of the bloodiest years of the war. It was his 5th deferment, but the health issues began shortly after he graduated university. Two years before that diagnosis, he was officially declared fit for service, but the sudden calcium build up in his heels prevented that. Donald Trump said he could not remember the doctor's name who diagnosed him with these bone spurs.

The doctor's name was Larry Braunstein, practicing in Queens in an office owned by Fred Trump (Donnie's father), according to the New York Times. He was doing a favor for Fred by making a false diagnosis for Donald. One of the doctor's daughters, Dr. Elysa Braunstein, said she always knew it was a personal favor. She could not confirm whether or not Donald was actually examined. There may also have been a second doctor, Manny Weinstein, who lived in an apartment owned by Fred Trump.

This runs contrary to Harold N. Bornstein's prognosis of the former president, who said that Trump was one of the healthiest human beings that ever existed in the history of humanity. As CCR and the late John McCain made clear, the majority of soldiers fighting in Vietnam came from low-income families.

Alright, I'm tired of researching Donald Trump, so here's a cartoon instead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZlzv1ElWTs

Trump's doctor, who proclaimed Trump to be the healthiest human being he has ever seen

2) Muhammad Ali

The most famous boxer of all time is a less irritating story. In 1966, Muhammad Ali refused to fight in Vietnam on moral grounds. In 1964, he failed the test to qualify for the armed forces due to substandard reading and writing skills. In 1966, the war had escalated so much that the standards were lowered and Ali qualified for military draft. He then refused on moral and religious grounds and went to jail for 5 years. His boxing license was withheld for another 3 years after that, each state doing it systematically.

In Clay vs. The United States, Ali said, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong [...] Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?" Supreme Justice Thurgood Marshall recused himself from the case.


3) Cheech Marin

Cheech Marin escaped from southern California to Canada during the draft. I thought for sure the guy spoke Spanish, but according to Wikipedia, he is not fluent in Spanish. Also, he was apparently in the Lion King and the Scarface video game (which is supposed to be pretty good). Nothing will compete with his performance in From Dusk Till Dawn, however.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUfel9sU-KI
    
His movie Born in East LA tries to fuck with your head because you though both of these marijuana-smoking degenerates were from Mexico. The guy grew up eating hamburgers and American burritos. This is the wrong way, as everybody knows tacos are better than American burritos. Beans suck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNR7WJ3SW60

I think the purpose of this article is mainly so you can see how shitty Donald Trump is compared to fucking everybody else on the planet, in case you didn't know that already.


4) William Gibson (added Dec. 2023)

William Gibson of Neuromancer fame headed to Canada in 1967 to avoid the draft. In an interview with Annalee Newitz on gizmodo, he also expressed his love for Canadian ideology in the interview: "Canada is set up to run on steady immigration. It feels like a twenty first century country to me because it's not interested in power. It negotiates and does business. It gets along with other countries."

In the documentary, No Maps for These Territories (2000), Gibson explains he was motivated to move to Canada more by the desire to bang hippie chicks and smoke hash. After being homeless for a few weeks, he got a job at Toronto's first head shop, selling bongs, etc.

Gibson said he was turned off by the other American expats in Toronto, most of whom were dealing with depression, addiction, and suicide. He managed to earn $500 from a gig on Canadian TV about the counterculture, which he used to then travel to Europe with his fiancee.

He ended up settling in Vancouver in the 1970s, scouring thrift stores for antiques and making profit selling to collectors, living the dream.



Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/us/politics/trump-vietnam-draft-exemption.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-avoided-the-military-draft-which-was-common-at-the-time-vietnam-war-2018-12

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_v._United_States

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheech_Marin

https://gizmodo.com/william-gibson-talks-to-io9-about-canada-draft-dodging-5015137