Author Archives: Mike Gaps
Seven Lions – Days to Come (feat. Fiora)
Seven Lions – Days to Come ft. Fiora [Official Music Video]
The first time I heard this song back in February was alongside this music video while I was bored, looking for new music to add to my library. I thought, and still think, it is one of the best music videos, and standalone songs, I have heard yet. It is only one of a few songs in recent memory where I simply said, “Holy crap, this is awesome.”
The song is about how a person can completely lose all feelings and emotions of their surroundings into oblivion if they continue to wait for someone who they cannot let go of. The trancelike melody of the song fits the lyrics very well, and the slow motion shots of the dazed woman in the music video compliments and ties it all together into one great work of art. I never quite though of the lyrics much with all those awesome instrumentals until now but they give the song song more meaning, and I do not simply look at it like it’s another trance/dub-step song. In fact, it differentiates itself well from the generic music one would expect to hear in clubs or videos on YouTube these days; the music video is not of some DJ with a blinding laser light show with crowds going wild. That, of course, makes this video a good thing to hear, and see.
Lyrics: http://www.metrolyrics.com/days-to-come-lyrics-seven-lions.html
President Gerald Ford
A political and economic conservative, he had never liked the expansion of state function that came with the Great Society, as a congressman opposing medicare, federal aid to education, and housing subsities. As a president, he tried to trim federal expenditures. – Pg. 322
President Gerald Ford represented a generation that strongly fought against government expansion and held closely to conservative ideals. With massive uprisings and support from college youth generation in the 1960’s for the Democratic party, he opposed much of the laws that were being instituted. During the 1970’s, stagflation became a large problem in our country, with many citizens looked for supportive ways to help the country recover. President Ford’s response was to reduce federal intervention and introduce the WIN program, which relied on citizens to change their habits by a slight margin. Though unfortunately his ideas were largely ignored by Congress and the public, Freeman likely believed that President Ford’s character as the anti-democratic leader was still important in the formation of domestic policies and the future of the country.
Black Community in Newark
Newark, …, once had been a thriving industry city. But after World War II, it bled industry, middle class residents, and retailing to its suburbs, leaving behind a majority black population, much of it poor. The 1967 riot devastated a city already in crisis. – Pg. 304
As the population of many cities declined after the Second World War, Newark presented the struggles that black citizens in such cities faced. With much of the city’s business infrastructure gone leaving little funding for the city, and riots such as those in 1967 degrading the state of the city, the black population was left with little support from their local government. This is unlike its neighbor New York City, where there was local support such as housing for the lower class black community. The city simply turns into a region for organized crime, run down infrastructure, and in general a place that cannot sustain civility within the community. Freeman likely thought it to be important to show his readers how the mass loss of business and population in a city can have a huge impact on its residents.
The CIA
“To justify the American intervention by portraying the Vietnamese conflict as an attack by North Vietnam against South Vietnam rather than as a civil war, his (Jyndon B. Johnson’s) administration went as far as having the CIA create elaborate fake evidence of large-scale shipments of arms from the north to the south.”
-Joshua Freeman, Pg. 232
The falsification of intelligence information is an example of how our government believed it needed to instill fear and anxiety in American citizens to receive positive reinforcement for the Vietnam War. With tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union at its peak during the 1960’s, any fuel that could be thrown in to feed support of military involvement would likely garner more support against the communist regime. Having the CIA falsify information to scare people and deceive their perception of the war’s success and agenda is of course wrong, and did not prove to be a successful tactic. It simply tacked on to the civil disobedience present in our country. Joshua Freeman likely thought it was important to remind the American people of the type of manipulation the American government is capable of to try and gain support for its own interests, and not necessarily of its citizens.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
“The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commision), soon after being set up by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, found itself swamped by complaints: its first year of operation, nine thousand cases were filed; by 1975, it had seventy-seven thousand. Quickly, it fell far behind in addressing them.”
– Joshua Freeman, Pg. 271
The struggles the EEOC faced presented a grim reality that equality in the United States was not something everyone saw eye to eye on. The presence of a government institution such as the EEOC, meant to help the Black population with fair employment opportunities, was not enough to convince many citizens that equality was to be recognized as the law of the land. With thousands of lawsuits and many companies continuing to racially discriminate the Black community from its workforce, high hopes of equality quickly diminished to continuous tension. The government was clearly unable to handle the large pushback of many of its citizens. Joshua Freeman likely presented these statistics to give a clear picture of the struggles the country was facing as it attempted to ‘rebrand’ itself as a truly equal nation.
“Freedom Summer” Volunteers
“On June 21, three project members, James Chaney, an African American from Meridian, Mississippi, Andrew Goodman, a white student from New York City, and Michael Schwerner, another white New Yorker and the oldest of the group at twenty four, on their way from investigating a church burning, were arrested by a deputy sherrif in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and then released on a deserted road into a Ku Klux Klan ambush. Klan members killed all three and hid their bodies.”
– Joshua Freeman, Pg. 193
The killings of these three “Freedom Summer” volunteers by the Ku Klux Klan members represents a time in American history where there were growing differences between the youth and older generations. It showed how the divide resulted in violent clashes that unfortunately cost the lives of these individuals. As more groups such as the “Freedom Summer” emerged, made up of young teenage college students, there was a greater push from the older generation to regain order and ban such institutions. Joshua Freeman likely referenced such a forgettable moment in history to demonstrate how serious the problem of generational divide was beyond what people heard of or saw.
