I tend to avoid talking politics with my parents (mostly because they watch CNN and MSNBC all of the time), but in rare instances where war comes up, I ask them, "what if they reinstate the draft?" Their immediate response is, "that will never happen" and that is the end of the conversation. I sometimes think they say that because they don't want to even entertain the idea of the possible outcomes of a draft for their children, though perhaps they genuinely believe that the draft would never be reinstated because of potentially how unpopular it would be. I have seen similar strong opinions on this board about the impossibility of a draft in the United States, and I have to wonder why you are all so certain about it?
Time and again we have seen decisions by the government being made that defy logic, especially politically, only for the average citizen to look on in complete apathy at best, and sheer joy at worst. Years of the Syrian Civil War being plastered everywhere with criticisms of US inaction have made the left more hungry for war. The Ukraine War has seen leftist individuals (even the trannies who you would expect to whine and moan about doing anything) actually travel to Ukraine and participate in fighting. The propaganda is powerful, and the apathy towards resisting is even stronger.
I think you would have to be foolish to not even entertain the idea of the Establishment reinstating the draft. It doesn't matter if the logistics would be impossible as that has rarely stopped the government before. As far as I see it, the Silent Generation and the Boomers are not satisfied with merely passing away quietly, they want to go out in a blaze of glory, consequences for their children, and the human race as a whole, be damned.
I don't see why it would be in their interests to do something so stupid. In theory, they could, but why would they do it?
It's one thing to pay no attention to the will of the population. That's par for the course everywhere in the West. It's quite another to force them to fight in your useless endless wars. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not doing enough to oppose my government, because of laziness and fear of retaliation, but if they wanted to put me through a meatgrinder for their nonsense? Hah. Even the laziest would go into open revolt.
Would it hit the rich kids though? You assume that there wouldn't be built-in exemptions that the rich could easily get around, just like the Vietnam War.