As morning broke over the Ukrainian city of Kherson last summer, those fumbling for their radios at 7am might have heard a Russian presenter greeting the day with his surreal imitation of a motivational video.
“As Lenin said: ‘In work we are forged.’ I too was an orangutan in a zoo, but when I started working hard I bought a car, built myself a villa in Crimea and even raised my IQ. Work as hard all day and you’ll be like me.”
Later, at 3pm, between a jazz-and-metal medley and a quiz with donuts for prizes, listeners could have heard a political discussion on the theme of “the Americans screwed up. Let’s make the Alaska People’s Republic exist” – a reference to the US state’s history under the Russian empire, before it was sold to the Americans in 1867.
In 1940, during the twilight between peace and war, a divided Congress passed a law to conscript young men into the Army—the first federal “peacetime” draft, which lasted throughout American participation in World War II. Congress accommodated young pacifist men whose consciences wouldn’t let them take part in the fighting: If they could convince the government that their pacifism was sincere, conscientious objectors would be assigned to either noncombatant military service or noncombatant 
