What Is Fortunate Son About?
The song has always been seen (or heard rather) as an anti-war protest song, and we can thank Forrest Gump for that. But the song has more to it than just people holding signs in the streets. It reflected the general message of the time: we – the people – are against the government’s involvement in Vietnam.
Source: YouTube
The general consensus was to defend the troops – the lower, working classes people fighting a war very few of them had a clear understanding of. “The way I feel is we should make darn sure that when we’re going to have a war, when we’re going to send our troops, it better be for a very good reason,” Fogerty explained as recently as 2016.