I just got finished watching The U.S. vs. John Lennon, an inspiring and provocative film about John Lennon’s peace advocacy, and how the government attacked him for it. This documentary follows Lennon’s life after the Beatles, until his death in 1980, includes interviews with Yoko Ono and many others, and touches on freedom of speech, drug freedom, peace and military warfare, and the politics of power.
As I watched it, several themes impressed me. But nothing impressed me more than that so little has changed since then. In a very real sense, we are replaying, repeating, reliving history. This film makes real that the abuses and perversions of justice that we see today occurred decades ago, and in essentially the same form: public beatings of peaceful protesters, restriction of speech around high-profile political events, abuse of government power for personal and political gain, censorship, political appeals to “patriotism,” fear-mongering against immigrants and “aliens,” all in order to support direct government attacks on the First, Fourth, and Fifth amendments. Have we made that little progress?
Some quotes from the film: read more »
