John Lennon Defeats America -- Dominic Nemmers
Contrary to Gloria Emerson’s thinking that music doesn’t save lives, I believe that it can save them through changing both popular appeal and the listener’s minds. The more popular an artist’s gets, the more likely mainstream America is likely to listen to them. And mainstream American is what decides the course of America, so I believe that laws and national changes can be made. Even though Richard Nixon won the election of 1972 in a landslide victory, I think that Lennon’s anti-war attitude still shone through in popular politics. It is possible in ’72 that people agreed with much of Nixon’s actions as a president, even though they might have been against his views on the war. I think the fact that he won the presidency with such a landslide means that the American voters thought that he was a better candidate than whoever he was running against, not necessarily that they thought he was right on Vietnam. I don’t believe that Lennon failed to impart a significant change in America’s stance on Vietnam, so I don’t believe it diminished his legacy at all. Tariq Ali has a good point to make about one man really affecting what he sees as the “largest, most powerful, imperial nation”; in reality, while one man can’t overthrow the government or make sweeping culture changes, he can contribute to an idea, and that idea can grow powerful enough to make real changes happen, so I believe they were rightly afraid. I think that Liddy, Hoover, Nixon, et al, were a bit too harsh to see leftist radicals of the 60’s as disloyal and traitorous, but I think the fringe elements of either party are very dangerous, and were probably correct in worrying about how the things they might say and do would affect America. I think part of having an effective government is feedback from the people. If people have no way to vent the frustrations they had with the government, there is no real avenue for improvement. I think conformity is as dangerous to a society as dangerous dissent. Many ideas still resonate today, especially with the Iraq War, which draws many parallels with the action of the Vietnam era. I do notice much effort by the government now, as then, to really quash dissent and maintain the status quo, but I believe that goes along with the position and the appearance of power.