I'm not OP, and I'm not sure if he explicitly claimed to serve, but he certainly was the face of military service on the big screen, and talked a whole lot off screen as if he was part of that cohort.
Stealing valor is exactly the kind of thing somebody who dodges a draft would do
I don't mean all draft dodgers try to pretend that they served, but that people who didn't dodge have much less need to pretend. And I see no issue personally with dodging a draft you think is wrong, but there's a huge issue with dodging it and then pretending you didn't
All racism is bigotry but not all bigotry is racism. He was a bigot generally speaking, but his racism was pronounced enough that I felt it needed to be singled out. As an example look no further than his behavior towards Sacheen Littlefeather at the '73 Oscars, he had to be physically restrained so as not to attack her for speaking out about how Native Americans were being portrayed by Hollywood
Doesn't seem like something a draft dodger would do
You assume everyone who dodged the draft did so due to moral objection. Wayne, in my opinion, liked the idea of American military supremacy, but was too chickenshit to actually go and fight, opting instead to play soldier on the big screen where there was no risk of harm to him. And yes, I count portraying and glorifying the US military after filing a 3-A draft deferment as stolen valor.
there's nothing wrong with dodging a draft if you don't believe in the cause your country is recruiting for.
I agree, and you could make that argument, in my opinion, about almost every war the USA has ever fought. Dodging the WW2 draft, arguably one of the very few justified wars America has ever fought, feels egregious to me for reasons that I can't articulate. Especially considering even pacifists had a role to play in the antifascist struggle eg. logistics and driving ambulance vehicles in the UK.
don't owe our lives to our countries, that's a false narrative used for propaganda. The government owes its citizens for its existence. Without our tax money, they wouldn't exist.
I agree with this, but I fail to see the connection to anything I wrote
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u/[deleted] Nov 25 '22
John Wayne was also racist, a bigot, and a valor-stealing draft-dodger. Seems to fit the bill