Wonks Anonymous had just graduated from high school with a freshly printed draft card. He was trying to figure out how to make a life and, at the same time, avoid a war that he believed to be profoundly useless and immoral. Personal safety entered into this decision but Wonks Anonymous believes that the open ended nature of the war and the constantly shifting definition of our goals in Vietnam played a role here. Wonks Anonymous will also note that the young Vietnamese soldiers who he saw in San Jose pursuing their education at a safe distance from the war did not help.

Well. What's my point? Most people do not want to hear about it, but we boomers did not have it easy. Our high school graduation present was the War in Vietnam. Whether we went or stayed home, protested or participated, only the very rich and well connected were sheltered from the impact of the war.

Many of us resisted in many different ways. We fought as good a fight as we knew how and we lost, first in 1968, then in 1972 and then many more times after that. As the losers, we lost control of history and our image was written into the popular imagination as dirty, anarchistic, cowardly, spaced out and violent. The popular historical image of the opposition to the Vietnam War is about as flattering as the popular historical image of Reconstruction after the Civil War. It is just as false.

This image has a profound impact on current US politics. No matter how much boomers change, moderate our positions or seek compromise we will still be faced with that fatal question: What were you doing in 1969? Unless you belonged to the Young Americans for Freedom or were in the military and supported the war to the last, you will be tainted by the slander that has become an unconscious given in our culture. Look at John Kerry.

Wonks Anonymous wishes that this were not so. He believes that the country would be a better place today if we had won some of the battles. He also sees no way that we can recover the losses or erase the slanders of the victors. 

The last thing we need is another election that pits an opponent of the Vietnam War against a supporter of that war. Older people who were neutral or pro-war and whose minds were formed in the poisonous atmosphere of the 1970's will suspect the anti-war candidate. They may not have a good reason but they will vote on this feeling. Wonks Anonymous believes that this has been an important factor in the success of talk radio.

As for our children, they will be deeply embarrassed by their parents ongoing family feud and try to leave the dinner table as quickly as possible. Obama has inspired younger voters and increased turnout in the Democratic primaries because, unlike all the candidates over the past twenty years, he is not part of this fight. He never was and he never could have been.

Wonks Anonymous is not a Democrat anymore and finds the platforms of both Obama and Clinton to be far too moderate. Nevertheless he hopes that Obama gets the Democratic nomination so that we can stop fighting this useless and costly war among ourselves.