Great great song but......................
1968 was the year of the Paris riots, anti-Vietnam demonstrations, Prague revolution, the deomocratic convention, King and Kennedy assisinations. There was a palpable change happening in the youth movement - The Stones were singing "Street fighting Man." even Elvis would soon get political with In The Ghetto.
And The Beatles release a song that is for all intents and purposes a call for the staus quo, for the kids to stop being silly and behave themselves. You'd almost think it was government sponsored.
I know the "in" on the album, but most people don't know that exists, and it's almost at the level of a kid pulling faces behind the teachers back, rather than the real rebel who stands up and confronts The man. It's a bit of a cop-out
Were they that enbedded in the establishment that they believed, in the face of everything to the contrary in the youth movement, that everything "is gonna be alright."? Or another case of don't-be-controversial-just-write-pretty-songs.
This little bit of hedging by John and his cringing Bigger-than-Jesus apolgy make Paul and his "I took acid -twice!!" the real revolutionary act by the band. Away from the band John has balls bigger than Kong, but The Beatles machine seemed more than capable of keeping him in place.  I wish they had spoken up more in the band, rather than just playing The Beatle Game.

I don't think John was playing the Beatle Game so much as just being insulated from what was really going on. When he looked into it a bit further, he became drawn into political activism. He wasn't trying to write a "pretty" song, certainly not with that guitar sound. I don't think they were Establishment, but they were incredibly rich and isolated. It was a few years before Beatles could move freely among normal humans without causing riots. So I look at this more as a commentary from afar rather than an informed statement. But I could be wrong!

John talked about the message with this song in an interview.

It was a song about anti-violence and it was also a song about, not status quo, but the fact that change needed to take place at an individual level.  What good does it do to destroy the system if a new system is stood up that is as corrupt as the old one because change hadn't taken place within the individual.

Re my original post - what a lot of pretentious rubbish. Sorry - I think I was desperately trying to think of something to say.