Rightwingers are flirting with a new military draft. Could it help disillusioned young men?

Proponents say mandatory service could help foster connection. Others see the proposal as a cynical political gimmick

• Read more from our series on young men and the US election

In Hillbilly Elegy, the Ohio senator and Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance recounts the time he spent in the US Marine Corps. As a public affairs marine, Vance avoided the pressures of combat during the Iraq war, tasked instead with escorting the media through war zones, embedding himself with combat units to diarize their routines, and snapping photographs. He also liaised with local Iraqi residents, played soccer with school children, and handed out candy, as a show of good will on behalf of an occupying military force. On one occasion, Vance gave a tiny pencil eraser to a child, who received the bauble as if it were some great gift. His face briefly lit up with joy," Vance writes, holding his two-cent prize aloft in triumph."

In Vance's recounting, that moment constituted something close to an epiphany: a stark lesson in humility, gratefulness, and the ability to find profound joy in a pencil eraser. Among more routine lessons (about hard work, grit, respect, etc) it was one of Vance's great takeaways from his military service.