Time & Perspective Quote by Edwin Starr

It lands like a shrug, but it cuts like a receipt. Edwin Starr is describing a choice that was supposed to be pragmatic - volunteer for the draft, do two years, get out. The bargain is almost bureaucratically simple, the kind of logic working-class young men were pushed toward in an era when "service" was sold as both duty and scheduling problem. Then history barges in. The Cuban Missile Crisis (and Starr's loose, conversational geography - "missiles in the Canal") becomes a reminder that ordinary lives get rerouted by headline decisions made far above their pay grade.

The line works because it captures how patriotism often functions in practice: not as soaring belief, but as compliance with a system you assume will keep its end of the deal. Starr isn't performing ideological outrage; he's replaying the moment the contract changed mid-sentence. "Kennedy made the extension" is pointedly passive. The president isn't demonized, just positioned as the switch-flipper. Agency sits with power; consequence sits with "one of the ones" - a phrase that turns a singular life into a category of expendables.

That casual, talk-sung cadence is its own critique. It mirrors how veterans and near-veterans often recount these pivots: not with speeches, but with rueful logistics. Coming from the voice behind "War" - a song built on moral clarity and blunt repetition - this anecdote supplies the origin story: the anti-war stance isn’t abstract. It's born from being trapped by timing, paperwork, and a crisis you didn't create, yet still had to serve.