the accidental rebel

A terrific piece in the Times yesterday by Bk native Paul Auster. He captures the true spirit of patriotism and draws subtle parallels of the past to Nam II.



Art courtesy of Paul Hoppe

The New York Times - 23-Apr-08
The Accidental Rebel
by Paul Auster

IT was the year of years, the year of craziness, the year of fire, blood and death. I had just turned 21, and I was as crazy as everyone else.

There were half a million American soldiers in Vietnam, Martin Luther King had just been assassinated, cities were burning across America, and the world seemed headed for an apocalyptic breakdown.

Being crazy struck me as a perfectly sane response to the hand I had been dealt — the hand that all young men had been dealt in 1968. The instant I graduated from college, I would be drafted to fight in a war I despised to the depths of my being, and because I had already made up my mind to refuse to fight in that war, I knew that my future held only two options: prison or exile.

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