The lyrics to John Cameron Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s 1969 anti-war protest song ‘Fortunate Son’ found themselves in the mouths of patriots, hippies and soldiers alike. This union of groups – which initially appears entirely contradictory – is made entirely possible and entirely believable by the scathing, hyper-critical message conveyed by the song’s lyrics.
Perhaps it is best to counterintuitively begin with a recent revival (no pun intended) of the song’s usage, owing to its presence at several rallies of former US President and professional shit-stirrer, Donald J. Trump. The pompous patriotic populist likely saw the quintessentially 60s, American guitar riff of the song as the perfect sound to raise the spirits of a horde of proud Americans – and yet John Fogerty immediately came out to criticise Trump’s use of the song, eventually issuing a cease and desist. Why? Well, because Donald Trump was a notorious draft-dodger of course, not fighting in the Vietnam War on account of his father’s financial and political power. The notion that an anti-war song should be incompatible with someone who consciously chose to avoid fighting in a war is a strange one, however this becomes even stranger when the knowledge of the songwriter’s own military service comes to light.
The reason that Trump’s use of the song was wholly inappropriate can be seen in the song’s title: Donald Trump is the ‘Fortunate Son’ that Fogerty criticises. The refrain “it ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no Senator’s son” refers to those young men who used their powerful parents’ influence to avoid serving the war. It is also a criticism of those Senators and businessmen who used their political influence to drive an unwinnable war, sending thousands of young American men to their deaths, whilst at the same time sitting in their comfortable suburban homes and helping their children to avoid conscription.
Perhaps Mr Trump’s confusion came from the opening line “some folks are born made to wave the flag, ooh they’re red white and blue,” however if he was paying enough attention to the lyrics he surely would have noticed that “some folks are” also “born silver spoon in hand” – those folks being the New York and Washington elites like himself.
For the same reason that the song’s lyrics were out of place at a Trump rally, ‘Fortunate Son’ saw popularity with the real soldiers deployed to Vietnam, many of whom had been drafted and found themselves in a life-threatening situation due to politicians who refused to end the war as it would
damage their ego. The song united the soldiers (sent to die for an image of America as an imperialist defender of liberal democracy against the vicious communists in the jungles of Indochina) with the hippies and wider anti-war movement who wanted an end to the pointless death and destruction.
At the time of the song’s release in 1969, the line “when the band plays ‘Hail to the Chief’ they point the cannon at you” referred to the gun-like finger of Uncle Sam, demanding Americans stand up for capitalism in Asia and fight the Viet Cong: this tongue-in-cheek criticism of the pseudo-patriotism of the US Presidents during the war (Johnson, Nixon and Ford) appealed to the young radicals who saw through the lies of their government and the soldiers who fell victim to that same manipulation. In 1970 an event occurred which might give way to a darker interpretation of that line. On the 4th of May, 1970, the Ohio National Guard were deployed to tackle an anti-war protest at Kent State University; the protesters were unarmed and non-violent and yet, feeling threatened (despite being armed to the teeth) by a group of teenagers, the National Guard fired 67 rounds of ammunition in under 13 seconds, killing 4 students and wounding another 9. The “band” in this case is the National Guard; the presidential anthem, ‘Hail To The Chief’ is the quick salvo of bullets; and the “cannon” was pointed firmly at those who opposed the war. The bitter irony of this event must not have been lost on the soldiers in the east who were fighting for the ‘land of the free’ whilst their fellow countrymen were gunned down on campus for having opinions different to those of the president, a president who in 4 years’ time would be the centre of the biggest corruption scandal in US history.
As the wasteful ‘War on Terror’ rages in the Middle East, extended by Joe Biden for ‘symbolic reasons’, ‘Fortunate Son’ reminds us that there is an inherent commonality between those who fight in war and those who oppose it. As BAE Systems and Raytheon reap the profits off mass murder via drone strike and successive presidents Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden further their power by bombing weddings and hospitals, it is important to remember that neither the peace activists nor the troops are the enemy, neither are to blame. In other words, “it ain’t me.”
