Overall was John politically good or bad? | Fab forum

This is an interesting question and one I'm not sure how to answer. Overall, I believe John's actual political insights were very narrow and naive, but it's not really John's insights that people cling to…it's the idea of them. So John's actual political contributions are very small, but the contributions people perceived him to have made are rather larger, inspiring other political actions. For instance, the song Give Peace a Chance was written a long time after people had started protesting the Vietnam War, but it was sung outside the White House as a protest song. People then associate John with the end of the war, but he actually kept his nose out of it for a long time. Other people made greater contributions to end the war, but John's perceived contributions are the ones that stick in the mind.

Overall, I think his message of peace and love, even when they were ideals that he didn't wholly carry out himself, have left a positive impact. I still hate the song Imagine.

Eilwynn said
I think it depends on which era of his life you're talking about.  He seems to have lost a lot of that naivete as he got older, but he was very naive as a young man first getting into politics.  Overall, I think he tried to do what he thought was best and believe the best of people, so I would agree with others on here that the ideas of his messages were more important than the messages themselves.

 

I think Imagine is an interesting song -- because I know someone else has mentioned it on here -- simply because John didn't actually believe in any of the things the verses spout.  No religion?  He went through several different religious and spiritual searches in the 70's and identified himself as a Zen Christian at the end of his life.  No possessions?  He owned several properties and had at least two walk-in closets in his New York apartment complex.  Furthermore, in a 1979 interview, he claimed he had no shame over this and that the minute you start to feel ashamed of how much you have, people try to take it from you.  No countries?  He was the only Beatle to attempt with great effort to completely emigrate from a British to a US citizenship.  Clearly he at least recognized that there are differences between countries.

 

So what's up with Imagine?  Clearly he thought that people can do better and overcome their instincts to create a good, more peaceful world.  So the chorus makes sense with what we know of him.  I don't know if the rest is ambiguous and misinterpreted, or if it was just written at a point in his life where, as I said, he was still very naive about a lot of things and easily swayed by the political ideas he heard around him.

 

Not even that makes sense, though, because the literal world of Imagine -- not an alternative interpretation of the lyrics, but if we actually take them to literally mean "we should do this" -- is a kind of socialism-related idea, and all the way back in the late 60's John was making cracks in his songs about Mao Zedong…  

 

Hm.  Sorry, I kind of ranted there.  I am fascinated by John Lennon's politics. 

Excellent discourse. These are things that have always bugged me about the Imagine Peace John. He's a creation…not the actual John. I get very frustrated over his manufactured image today. It makes him so one dimensional…and he wasn't at all.