rant · moment 4 of 14
Vietnam Vets, Spitting Hippies, and the Myth of Rambo
from Living on the Edge of Death · #112
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
4 minRay dismantles the myth that Vietnam vets were widely spat on, cites drug use stats among soldiers, compares it to 60s civil rights violence and lynchings, and argues the troops have always been sent into meaningless wars from Normandy to Iraq.
- 7:09Tim estimates 85% of Vietnam soldiers were using dope, unsurprised given the jungle conditions and enemy tactics.
- 7:59He questions how many doped-up soldiers were actually succeeding at their objectives in Vietnam.
- 8:32Howie finds actual 1971 data: 51% smoked marijuana, 31% used psychedelics, 28% used hard drugs like cocaine and heroin.
- 9:03Tim pivots to the spitting-on-vets narrative: a few soldiers got spit on, but babies also got killed in the war.
- 9:19The Rambo myth—that Vietnam vets were hunted by local police—never actually happened; First Blood was fiction.
- 9:40He contrasts minor soldier incidents with actual 1960s violence: tear gas at the Democratic Convention, lynchings in the South, murdered civil rights activists.
- 10:11Tim argues troops have always had it fine and shouldn't be coddled; the real support is not sending them to pointless wars.
- 10:34He questions the Osama bin Laden narrative and calls the justification for Afghanistan a lie.
- 10:44Colin Powell, a great man disgraced, was either lied to or complicit in the false WMD claims that justified Iraq.
- 11:04The Iraq War killed a million people, but nobody protests that; instead people protest NFL players kneeling.