Because They Can't Have My Son
Why it's time for American parents to start fighting back
When Trump won the 2024 presidential election, everyone I care about was upset. We all knew the lawlessness he would unleash, and we all knew no one would stop him. But my greatest fears at that time were more specific. I worried the most about my 16-year-old son.
Since Trump’s election, things have gone pretty much as I thought they would. He caved to Putin, which was always the only thing he was ever going to do, and it’s beginning to look like things in Ukraine are not going to work out for the good guys. Putin has been emboldened, and as a result, no one in all of Europe is safe. We just invented a fictional cause for war in Venezuela, we’re threatening Iran, Columbia, Mexico, and Cuba and now the Trump administration is openly declaring that the entire Western Hemisphere is in play. And for all the fake talk about Trump ending wars, every major conflict on the globe is accelerating in intensity.
I’m a cold war kid with a father who was nearly drafted into the Vietnam War, and my greatest fear is that, if things keep going the way they are now, my son will likely become eligible for the draft at about the same time all this spirals out of control. And for those who think “Trump would never do that” all I can say is that I have heard that sentence hundreds of times, and it has not yet been true once. He would. He would in a heartbeat if he saw the slightest advantage in it.
Most Americans believe that the United States military is the strongest on Earth, and they are correct … but it isn’t the largest. China’s army is far bigger than ours, as is India’s. By total number of troops, we are only slightly larger than North Korea. Our strength is not in our numbers. It never has been. Our strength comes from technological superiority, which is something any military leader worth his rank can tell you only goes so far. If we engage in multiple conflicts at the same time, as Trump seems intent to do, our all-volunteer forces may not be enough. And as I said previously, my father was nearly drafted, so it has happened, and it wasn’t all that long ago when it did. And anyone who doesn’t think it can happen again simply hasn’t thought it through.
By now, everyone who hasn’t labelled me a crank is probably holding their loved ones a bit closer, and I believe that is the correct response. I don’t want to be alarmist about what’s happening to our country, but it sure does feel like we’re on the verge of losing ourselves to the greed of billionaires and criminals. And if we don’t do something about it soon, we may lose an entire generation of sons and daughters to the churning gears of America’s war-for-profit machine.
Make no mistake, however this goes down, the rich will get richer, and working-class kids will die. And if you’re a parent, now’s the time to step up.
I don’t know much, but I know that.
Brett Pransky is a writer, a teacher, a father, and a husband, but rarely in that order. He spends his days amplifying the voices of freedom and democracy as an Editor right here at The Political Voices Network, and he spends his nights trying to fix the world one clever sentence at a time.
And don't think, Hegseth aside, that they won't also come for your daughters.
Trump doesn't need much of an excuse. In fact multiple talking heads on the right have already raised the need for compulsory military service and of course it's coming from those least affected by it.