APerno wrote:. . . and we now know that Ali was approached by the military and it was made clear to him that he would be "Joe Louis-ed' - all that talk about Ali being a coward was nonsense/irrelevant - Ali understood he was going to be used to recruit young African-American, and to justify an unpopular war to the Black community. - He gave up much for his principles - it would have been much easier to play along, do two years, and probably spend most of it fighting exhibitions and doing stand up with Bob Hope. - Never liked him as fighter, rooted against him in very fight he ever had - but I had nothing but admiration for him as a man.
- Congrats guys on a far more civil discourse than displayed in the Wilt/Ali thread now locked.
This a far more volatile topic, but in the main I go with Perno here. Regardless of motivations, Ali took it to the Supremes who ruled in his favor, so end of. Nonetheless, I see plenty of cartoon history mooted here. There was The Domino Theory of states falling to the Communists that the highly credentialed LBJ braintrust took seriously that led to much greater Vietnam involvement that set the stage for most US military wars today. We win all the battles, yet continue to lose the Wars because of distant central authorities disconnect from actual reality. Yeah, in any war the military contractors always make money and it's a much bigger biz today with all the oil in the middle east.
The Draft Lotto was sorta like the TUE/Manny fight where authorities couldn't even fill out a grade school level scorecard properly. They failed to mix the numbers properly, and then held supplemental drafts I wasn't aware of. Don't recall my draftcard having my lotto number on it, but I dropped my first year student deferment after former dorm mate dropped by to tell me he'd just joined the army so he could go over and kill him some gooks. It was a miserable time to be a student caught between protesters and patriots, and worse to be shipped into killing fields over there. BTW, Roger Staubach served well, but yeah, not many athletes that I recall. Don't know how George and Holmes got out. Net result was in the confusion, turns out I really didn't know my draft number that would have changed anyway, so there but for the grace of God could've been me over there stuck in a war I never wanted and was too young to vote for or against. After riding the active draft list for a year they deactivated me.
The people of the US were becoming naturally integrated in baseball, boxing, and even bicycle racing with Major Taylor by the end of the 19th Century in spite of brutal reconstruction imposed on the south against the wishes of assassinated Abe Lincoln. The Republican Congress allowed the monopoly of MLBaseball to be formed with their segregated policies that empowered the Democrats in their Jim Crow policies. Yet, still, Stan Musial played HS baseball with the father of Ken Griffey Sr who begot KGJr for example. My own community was historically integrated and suffered less from economic policies that nearby communities imposed on minorities, but after a couple of centuries we are now being overrun by both legal and illegal criminally smuggled immigration policies seeking to exploit our natural beauty and tranquility for a rush of some of the most pathetic development I've ever seen. Hence the election of Prez Rump and his ilk as a backlash and the rise of the Sanders movement.
BTW, Rump graduated from a military academy and used his student deferment to save his ever expanding bacon.
Look at a political map and you'll see the skunk politicians have swapped out their stripes across the same Mason Dixon Line of the Civil War with former Northern Republicans now Democrats, and former Southern Democrats now Republicans, and still setting their civilian stock against each other in a sociopathic rush for power and money. Nothing ever changes but for new shiny faces, so I'd say by extension western democracies are failing yet again. The US said no more Vietnams, yet created far worse with now at least a 100 year war of reformation of Islamic countries just getting warmed up. Be glad for today and remember all those draftees who didn't have Ali Money or political backing who were lost. How many hundreds of millions lost over these thousands of years of war?
Do you believe in evolution? Do you think maybe over the thousands of years that many of the bravest, fittest folk have been eliminated to create an over preponderance of cowards running the show? Sure seems that way in boxing today, and in fact the today's grizzly bears are far less aggressive and lethal than when Lewis and Clark first explored the west, and that just a couple centuries ago.
