On the US vs John Lennon

I had the opportunity rececently to view the documentary the US vs John Lennon. I will leave my personal response and opion of the film aside and instead focus on an image in the film that to me manifested all the political power was, is and can be.

The image is of Richard Nixon looking out the window in white house, presumably at a collection of anti-war demonstrators connected Lennon's peace activism. Nixon seems to be both anxious and preoccupied with it.

To me this seemed absurd. Why would the President of the most powerful nation on earth be afraid of a group of people who are young, without much financial power, and had no intention of violence? The film tries to make the point that 26th Amendment, which lowered the suffrage age by three years, perhaps caused this. I found this to be a weak argument as the number of voters would have been in the millions, but not a threatning number.

Yet Nixon was still afraid.

The point of the film is to show that somehow Lennon was heroic in his activism and that he made a substantial difference. I do not doubt his sincerity but I do doubt the amount of credit they give him for his influence. I blame, rather, the US government, for actually being afraid of him. The evidence of this is CIA documents leading up to Nixon himself which showed the agencies survellience of Lennon.

For the rhetorical sake of repition: I find this absurd! Lennon had little geopolitical influence yet the US accredited him worthy of suspicion. In the middle of the Cold War, during the end of the Vietnam war and all the other major geopolitical events going on in the 1970s it seems incredibly foolish to hunt a popular musician - despite his activism.

This got me to thinking about the way the world works: there exists a great degree of unpredictability and chaos to what happens. I'm not talking about the externally human world, such as the environment or the spiritual realm, but what happens in human society.

And this is not neccesarily negative.

If Lennon, who has only a small amount of power, can be perceived as such a threat by the United States, that has fantastic ramifications. It seems to give much more agency to us as historical actors - that is, as people who live, work and create change in history. If Lennon could become something analgous to a national threat what can we do?

This idea that we have an untapped, unused potential for historical agency really intrigues me. As someone who desires justice on a global scale I can see potential in the future. I can also see grave danger.

What happens when people awaken to this agency, one that is both powerful yet uncontrollable?