I am ten years younger than Mr. Prelutsky and I would not have trusted him in 1968 and I do not trust him now. The motivation for the anti-war movement was not fear but loathing. Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 with “a secret plan for peace”. When it turned out that the secret plan was a hoax we became bitter. This child of Quakers had been elected as the peace candidate and after he tricked us in the 1968 election he continued to prosecute a war which by that time just about everybody knew was pointless and vicious. He then invented a “silent majority” of imaginary friends to agree with him. This along with his marvelously amoral “Southern Strategy” created new and bitter divisions along class and race. I was drafted into years of pointless, degrading military service and even though my friends were coming home in body bags, fear was not what I was feeling. I hated Nixon then and for the sake of history and for the sake of my wasted friends I still hate him now.
