| Monsters of Folk – Baby Boomer Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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"We've got to stand a little closer to what it is we're leaning on, Who was it that first said it? Could it be he could be wrong about the pilgrims and the natives having dinner on the lawn?" I think it is safe to say that the "We" in this song is the American population. This verse deals with the colonialistic and imperialistic ideals that the country was founded on and in many ways still continues because of our lack of historical pretense and understanding, as a population as a whole. What it means when it says;“What we are leaning on,” in my understanding, is this lack of historical accuracy of what actually took place in many of the things that we have bought into about our country’s first contact with the Natives of America. The song states that we “got to stand a little closer” and examine and better understand what actually took place, “could it be he could be wrong about the pilgrims and the natives having dinner on the lawn?” It is well documented but hardly known that Columbus was a gold-hungry man who enslaved Natives to mine and whose men beat, mistreated, and killed Indians and even raped women. But the irony is that he is idolized and spoken of as a hero to our school children. (these are the issues I believe this song touches) I haven't quite listened to the song enough to try to decipher the mention of “borders” but I have concluded that the store “Borders” could be the reference because it mentions books and shelves but not sure. The censorship part of the verse is also interesting because it is what the government does for a lot of our Country's past, but I havent been able to tie it all together yet. Interested to hear what everyone else thinks. |
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