Bruce Springsteen played the Creedence Clearwater Revival song “Fortunate Son” at the Concert for Valor Tuesday night. This is wholly unsurprising, as the song fits quite neatly into Springsteen’s lifelong project of highlighting the lives of ordinary people and protesting the way that the privileged and powerful abuse the ordinary working people that make this country work. For anyone who has been living under a rock since the 60s, “Fortune Son” is a song about how ordinary people who are drafted into service are being exploited by flag-waving, wealthy hypocrites that love starting wars but don’t love so much fighting them. Some modern examples you might be familiar with include George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. It’s such a prominent pattern that it even got a name during the Iraq War: “chickenhawk”.
It’s become almost an article of faith these days: Once a public figure with a reputation for being left of center makes a statement that touches on the truth, a $#&^storm of recrimination is rained down upon then by Conservatives. How DARE they question the dominant narrative? In this case, it’s Bruce Springsteen playing “Fortunate Son” at this week’s Concert for Valor. Almost immediately, Conservatives armed with keyboards, cameras, and microphones went into action. They attacked Springsteen for not parroting the dominant narrative that says we must bow down before veterans without uttering or even thinking anything that questions the business of war-making. The thought that good people can support and revere veterans while decrying the war machine that continues to produce more of them seems something the Conservative hive-mind is incapable of entertaining.
“Fortunate Son” is Fogerty’s paean to ordinary, middle-class types who are drafted and sent into battle by wealthy and powerful men who profit from war…but want nothing to do with fighting it themselves. These oligarchs have a vested interest in Veteran’s Day: the patriotism and flag-waving helps to recruit bodies to fight their wars and inflate their bottom line.
One need only harken back to the era of the Vietnam War to remember that the wealthy and powerful more often than not pulled strings to get their sons excused from military service or from placed in combat units. “Fortunate Son” directly addresses the truth that when it comes to fighting and dying for this country, all are not created equal. What Conservatives saw as “tone deafness” was simply Springsteen expressing the sentiment that the lives of soldiers have value, and the selection of who fights our wars is unjust.
The Conservative argument is essentially that war has value, that it’s good and should be defended in order that people (not the children of wealth and privilege, of course) will enlist to fight them. People are useful only insofar as they do the fighting and dying that benefit the oligarchs profiting off their sacrifices.
A cursory look at the lyrics shows that “Fortunate Son” isn’t “anti-war” or even “anti-American.” It’s anti-exploitation and anti-oligarchy. It protests the truth that all too often the people doing our fighting and dying are the children of the voiceless and powerless, the poor and the middle class. Evidently, Conservatives don’t appreciate hearing the truth.
some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they’re red, white and blue
And when the band plays “Hail to the Chief”
Oh, they point the cannon at you, LordIt ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no Senator’s son
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no fortunate one, noAnd:
Yeah, some folks inherit star spangled eyes
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord
And when you ask them, “How much should we give?”
Oh, they only answer, more, more, more, ohIt ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no military son
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no fortunate one
The message of “Fortunate Son” is that the wealthy and powerful benefit from the blood and sacrifice of those lower down the economic food chain. Oligarchs start wars that they’re loathe to fight; that’s what the poor, minorities, and the middle class are for. War’s an abstract concept as long as someone else is doing the fighting and dying.
Veterans have every right to be proud of their service and to expect to be honored for it. That said, many veterans are all too cognizant of the reality that their sacrifice benefited those who were never at risk of seeing combat. They understand more than anyone that the war they fought was a waste, and that they weren’t fighting to “protect our freedom,” as the Conservative mantra would have us believe. They were fighting to protect the business interests of those who profit from war.
[A] lot of veterans are reasonably uncomfortable accepting that they sacrificed so much for a pointless war that was more about ego-stroking George Bush than it was anything else, and so they, too, defend these wars. It’s human nature to rationalize your experiences and no one wants to feel their suffering was wasted. But that’s what the beauty of art and music is, that it can sometimes break down those defenses and help people engage, on a deeper level, with their experiences. With “Fortunate Son”, it’s simply incorrect to call it an anti-war song. It’s simply making the point that if you think war is so great, then you first, assholes. That has an emotional power that can help break down some of the defense systems and get people to a real discussion about whether or not we should start a bunch of wars for funsies.
Indeed. If war is so great, then why aren’t those extolling it the ones doing the fighting and dying? Why aren’t they patrolling the Swat Valley or taking fire from Taliban insurgents in Korengal? The truth is that the rich and powerful benefit by the perpetuation of a system in which blind obedience is not just the norm, but demanded. Blind obedience, generated via propaganda and disinformation, is what provides the grist for the war mills. It’s what allows those whose business is war to plan on the continuation of their great good fortune. When people begin to question that blind obedience, it imperils the financial well-being of those who benefit from the needless, pointless death and dying of other, lesser mortals. Conservatives continue demanding blind obedience, because they know if they don’t there’s every chance they might be forced to pick up rifles…something the children of wealth and privilege are not at all favorably disposed towards.
The back story of “Fortunate Son,” written by John Fogerty, makes it absolutely appropriate for Veteran’s Day:
Fogerty was drafted when he was 20 years old, in 1965, and came home from active duty two years later. In his own words, he was inspired to write “Fortunate Son” because “I did not support the policy or the war… If you asked anyone in the army at that time why we were going to Vietnam to fight, no one could answer… Probably the real answer was keeping the war machine going, and business. To sacrifice a young man’s life with no real purpose, taking these young men from their mothers and families, was wrong. I was the guy who was living this life… I had very strong feelings about all of this… To me, those soldiers were my brothers. I understood them because I was also drafted into the army just like them. The protest was against the policy, not the soldiers….
“I had been thinking about all this turmoil… It had been on my mind for some time how sons of certain senators escaped the draft. It was very upsetting to me, as a young man of draft age. In political conventions, many times, states will use the phrase “favorite son,” as they recognize their leader to make a nomination. The songwriter in me thought about this, and I changed the name to ‘Fortunate Son,’ a phrase to describe what we have all witnessed in our time… When the troops came home, Nixon turned his back on the soldiers. As my feelings about this got stronger and stronger, I knew I had to write about it.” Fogerty wrote the music first “without even knowing what the lyrics were.” Later, he went to his bedroom with a pen and paper and wrote the lyrics in twenty minutes. “It was very personal to me.”
Yes, Veterans Day should be about those who serve. It should be about those who’ve sacrificed on behalf of this country. It should also shine a light on the inequity of a system that demands blind obedience in order that our thirst for war be slaked with the blood and sacrifice of the poor and middle clasee. The parades and other events that make Veterans Day what it is shouldn’t obscure the truth…which is that the wealthy and powerful hold war to be of greater value than the lives of those fighting them.
THAT’S the message of “Fortunate Son”…and war-loving Conservatives hate having to acknowledge the truth.
