Government Cheese

There was a time when the U.S Government stored 4 billion dollars worth of cheese in a cave. Yes, cheese. How did this happen?

During the Great Depression era, the price of milk had plummeted. And since a large portion of America were farmers, the Government would help a large portion of the country by helping them out. The USDA developed a "Price Parity Formula", which meant that if the price of producing something such as milk dropped below of what it costed to produce, the government would make up the deficit. This was succeeded by the Agricultural Act of 1949 which provided formal price support to farmers, by regulating the supply of commodities like wheat, corn, and dairy.

During the Oil Crisis of 1973, prices of food shot up, especially dairy products. Just a few years later, they plummeted again. To help dairy farmers out, President Jimmy Carter promised to raise the price of milk 6 cents per gallon. In addition, he passed a law that would make it go up every 6 months as well to account for inflation. He then signed a bill that pumped in $2 billion into the dairy industry.  This made it very profitable to produce milk, and farmers scrambled to produce as much milk as they could. There was no such thing as "too much", as the Government was there to buy up all the excess. However, the problem with milk, is that it spoils really quickly . Farmers had to turn the milk they produced into things like butter, powdered milk, and cheese, which stay longer. The government then bought all these things by the ton. Stockpiles ballooned, and the U.S had so much of all these dairy products which they didn't know what to do with. Powdered milk was donated to developing countries. In 1981, Reagan, who had pledged to cut down on food stamp spending, said that the U.S would distribute 30 million pounds of surplus cheese to people in need. Cheese manufacturers cut up their supply into 5 pound blocks, and shipped them to warehouses all over America, the biggest of which being a cave system near Kansas City, MO, which the government rented out. And thus, Government Cheese was born.

Left: Ronald Reagan holding a block of "Government Cheese." Right: Packages of Government Cheese and butter.


These bricks of cheese were distributed to food pantries, schools, and other organizations. It became the quintessential symbol of government food assistance, and was in the house of every American family on welfare. Author Bobbi Dempsey recounts her memory of growing up on Government cheese: "While the taste has been described in many ways... Many people have compared it to Velveeta—or, at least, the poor man’s Velveeta.In the school cafeteria, or when a friend came over and peered in the fridge, the cheese was a source of infinite shame—a clear indicator of our financial situation. But when no one else was watching, my siblings and I liked the cheese, or at least learned to tolerate it. My younger brother was probably the biggest fan, believing then (and now) that it made for the best grilled cheese sandwiches."

By the 90's, it wasn't as profitable to produce milk in such quantities, and as a result, Government Cheese started to disappear. However, in recent years, the USDA has gone back to purchasing surplus cheese. In June 2018, the amount of surplus cheese reached a record high at 1.4 billion pounds.
This is due to many factors. Aside from farmers overproducing and milk consumption going down, the Trump Administration's trade war, China and Mexico have slapped tariffs on American dairy products. Exports of Cheese went down 63% in China and 10% in Mexico. In addition, though American cheese consumption is increasing, consumers are preferring specialty, European cheese over mass-produced blocks of processed yellow cheddar.

Cheeseburgers. Mac n Cheese. Grilled cheese sandwiches. Philly cheese steaks. Nachos and Cheese.  The iconic, fluorescent-orange America cheese had defined a lot of American cuisine. The government is doing everything it can to get us to consume more of this stuff. They're working with fast food companies and getting them to stuff as much cheese as they can in their products, resulting in creations like Pizza Hut's cheesy crust pizzas and Taco Bell's Quesalupa. The Trump Administration scaled back nutritional standards allowing more cheese and milk to be served in school lunch.



All in all, the one thing we can count on is that cheese, in its fatty salty goodness, will continue to play a large role in the American diet for years to come.

Sources:
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/01/08/cheese-surplus-united-states
https://www.milkbusiness.com/article/how-government-cheese-came-to-be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPuY0oDGeiw
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/07/645459818/government-cheese-well-intentioned-program-goes-off-the-rails
http://fortune.com/2019/01/09/cheese-surplus-us-cheddar-2019/

The History of Emoji

In my previous post, I talked about how Unicode standardized text to appear the same on every device/platform by assigning each character to a number. If we can assign hundreds of thousands of numbers to store characters, we can do the same with pictures.

In the early days of computing, people did not have much to work with when trying to express their emotions through text. A solution to this problem was proposed way back in 1982, when people 
had difficulty telling the difference between humorous and serious posts on Carnegie Mellon University's digital message board. Faculty member Scott Fahlman came up with a solution: use the symbol :-( to denote serious posts, and :-) for jokes. He even instructed people to "read it sideways."

The modern emoji was created in 1999 by Shigetaka Kurita, an engineer for a Japanese telecommunications company called NTT Docomo. He wanted a way to convey information through icons, rather than having to spell out the word for it. So he sketched a set of 176 12 x 12 pixel images, and called them "emoji". The name combines two Japanese words "e" (picture) and "moji" (character). Unlike today's emoji, this early version put emphasis on symbols rather than faces.  
The original 176 emojis, created by Shigetaka Kurita in 1999.


Emoji became a huge success, and other companies like Apple started to notice. In 2007, Google's software internationalization team petitioned to get emoji recognized by the Unicode Consortium. Unicode accepted in 2010, and adopted 625 new emoji characters. Now officially their own language, they could be accessed on all devices. The Unicode Consortium adds new Emoji every year, and as of June 2018, there are 2,823 of them.

While the scripts of languages can usually only be read by the people who speak it, pictures can be interpreted by anyone. As a result, emoji reached a truly global audience. They have had such an massive influence in our day to day lives and our culture. A certain movie was made based on them, and despite a 7% on Rotten Tomatoes, it did turn a profit. And though Blogger's spellchecker doesn't recognize "emoji" as a word, Oxford dictionary named "😂" the 2015 word of the year. Though created with simple intentions, the presence of emoji are worldwide. They represent an era of globalization, and the diffusion of culture to all corners of the earth.

Sources:
https://www.rd.com/culture/history-of-emoji/
https://emojipedia.org/faq/
https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/press/news/2016/9/2/WOTY
https://www.wired.com/story/guide-emoji/

Apollo 13

Apollo 13
After the landing of the Apollo 11 on the moon, six more Apollo missions followed by the end of 1972. Apollo 13 was one such mission, and was intended to be NASA’s third moon-landing mission. However, a malfunction in the rocket turned the mission into one for survival.  The spaceflight stands today as a demonstration of NASA innovation saving lives on the fly, and has been featured in a movie.
The astronauts on the mission were Jack Swigert, Jim Lovell, and Fred Haise. Lovell was the world's most traveled astronaut. He had three missions and 572 spaceflight hours of experience. He was in Apollo 8, the first mission to circle the moon, and flew two Gemini missions.
 The Apollo spacecraft was made up of two independent spacecraft joined by a tunnel: orbiter Odyssey, and lander Aquarius. The crew lived in Odyssey on the journey to the moon. It was launched on April 11, 1970. However, on April 13, when they were nearing the moon, mission controller Liebergot noticed a low-pressure warning on a hydrogen tank. At first, they thought that the hydrogen tank just needed to be resettled- a fairly routine procedure. Moments later though, power disappeared and oxygen pressured dropped. The crew notified Mission Control, with Swigert famously uttering, "Houston, we've had a problem." (It was the movie that changed the line to “Houston, we have a problem").
Luckily, the Aquarius was functional enough to provide a place for the crew to stay until they neared Earth. The Aquarius didn’t have a heat shield, so they would need to be in the Odyssey for entry. The crew was forced to power down every non-essential system in Aquarius to preserve power. They had no source of heat and had to ration food and water.
Lovell, Haise and Swigert returned safely to the Pacific Ocean on April 17. Despite the mission being aborted, it was called a "successful failure" because of the experience gained in rescuing the crew.The spacecraft design was reconfigured with better wires and an extra tank, and subsequent missions did not face the same problem.
In 1994, Lovell and journalist Jeffrey Kluger co-wrote a book about Lovell's spaceflight career that primarily focused on the events of the Apollo 13 mission. The book was called "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13", and spurred the movie "Apollo 13" (1995), which starred Tom Hanks. The movie won two Academy Awards and was filmed in cooperation with NASA.

Sources:
https://www.space.com/17250-apollo-13-facts.html

Why Bernie Sanders Needs to Step Down

      I figured it would be fitting to write my last Blogger post for this class as an opinion piece—you know me and my opinions.  As a staunch progressive who will be voting in the next election, I have found myself in a very tough and presumably relatable position: how do I choose between the 20 Democratic candidates already announced to be running in the 2020 presidential election?  It's especially difficult considering that the two frontrunners, according to polls, are the oldest candidates ever: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, respectively.  At this point, I believe Bernie Sanders needs to step down.
      Why only Sanders?  Well, Biden is currently in the first position, and we need to keep our strongest contender if we want to have a chance at winning the presidency.  However, on top of that, and perhaps even more significantly, Bernie Sanders is currently creating the divide amongst liberals.  He's too far left for the American voting population, and even if he did win, he would create an even more tense and reactionary Republican movement.  Many of the policies that he proposes have no explanation for their funding, yet sound so lovely that he dissuades voters from all other Democrat candidates that cannot offer free college tuition for all.  Sanders has repeatedly criticized his opponents, and in the 2016 election, became most unforgivable for attacking Hillary to such an extent that hoards of his supporters refused to show up to the polls and vote for her after her primary win.
      I wrote more, but it got deleted, so that's sad.  Essentially, Bernie is also problematic in his own policies.  As the senator of Vermont, he has repeatedly voted to represent the interests of his people rather than to assist those interests.  For example, he has time and time again voted against gun control, contrary to his apparently staunch liberal position in his presidential campaign.  In a country that is so tense, close, and opposing in its views on how to protect itself, it's very dangerous to put a man who is not consistent in his policies.  He has also acted problematically; once at an interview, he was asked how he planned on helping black women as president, which he completely ignored.  Additionally, he compared urban and rural guns, favoring the latter, and as he explained his inherent bias became clear towards white Midwesterners and against commonly colored cityfolk such as Latinos and African-Americans.
      He's too old, he's wishy-washy, and he is divisive.  There are tons of qualified candidates of diverse and important backgrounds and experiences, and it's their time.  For him?  It's time to step down... but that's just my opinion, of course.

Sally Ride

      Sally Ride was the oldest of 2 and born in Los Angeles California to elders in the Presbyterian Church. While she had long harbored an interest in science, she was also a nationally ranked tennis player. She attended and graduated from Portola Junior High School and attended Birmingham High School until she transferred to, and graduated from the private Westlake School for Girls.
       She then attended Swathmore College for 3 semesters, then went to Berkeley to take physics classes, then transferred to Stanford as a junior. She eventually graduated from Stanford with a Bachelor's in English and physics. She also went on to earn a master's and PhD at Stanford in 1975 and 1978 respectively.
        In 1978, she was selected to be one of 38 astronauts in NASA Group 8, which was the first to choose women. In 1979, she graduated and began to work as a mission specialist running the ground based capsule communicator for the second and third space shuttle flights. She also helped with the development of a robotic arm called Canadarm.
        On June 18, 1983, she became the first woman in space as part of the Challenger crew for STS-7. Her main job was to operate the robotic arm. In 1984, she again went to space in the Challenger and spent more than 343 hours in space.
         After the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster, she was named Head of the subcommittee of the Rogers Commission, which investigated the cause of the disaster. 

Future of the political parties in America

Recently the Democratic and Republican parties have seemingly gone under a massive transition. They both integrated more populist aspects into their parties and were torn apart between the old center and the new younger radical. This division took place for the GOP under the Obama years when the party was forced under and the old Country Club Republicans ultimately lost influence to the younger and more populist TEA party faction. Trump embodies this new party that is more socially conservative, brash, and at least outwardly seems like a party of the people. He's taken a hard stance on immigration, rolling back minority rights, and weakening the federal government. Compare this to George H. W. Bush who realized the importance of legal immigration and the importance of the federal government.
Today another similar shift is happening within the Democratic party. Much of the old guard like Nancy Pelosi, Obama, and Joe Biden who are much more centrist in their beliefs and even willing to reach across the aisle is now losing influence to a new generation of Democrats. These Democratic Socialists are people like Alexandria Acasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders who stand for much more liberal if not even socialist views on healthcare, higher education, environmental policy, and welfare. 
Although personally, I do agree that there is a need for reform I believe that such political division within our country is not good. The inability to come to bipartisan agreements has become more and more frequent and can be quite disrupting. People are left as the collateral when the government shuts down because Congress couldn't agree on something. Today sectionalism is extremely high between the coastal population centers which are primarily blue and the rural middle of our country which is extremely red. If America is unable to reach a more practical return to center the shocks of such a polarized system will be more far-reaching than just a government shutdown. The inability to place another chief justice on the supreme court without a huge political scandal shows that the wheels of our democratic system are under threat because of our polarization. We are all Americans and all want the best for our country so we should act accordingly and not put party ahead of state.

Where is Terrorism?

Under the Bush administration, terrorism has become the center of American foreign policy. There has been active, aggressive American military and political involvement in the Middle East ever since George W. Bush declared the "War on Terrorism". America has established itself as the keeper of peace in the world, but should the United States continue to assert its dominance over conflicts in the Middle East? How much influence does terrorism has on the United States, that it should put its own country at risk by making enemies in the Middle East?

While our military is stationed far away in the Middle East, the main reason why there had not been a successful, notable terrorist attack on the United States is because that America employs a layered set of defenses in addition to military interference. According to New America's analysis on the threat of terrorism in the United States, 48% of jihadists are currently monitored by a direct informant, 24% are implicated by a tip from family members or the community, and 9% are implicated by a tip from the general public. This minimizes the possibility of organized terrorism under a network of terrorists. Individual jihadists may still be able to pose a deadly threat, but any individual in America may be able to pose a deadly threat. A high school shooter and a lone jihadist poses the same kind of threat, however, and the only real way of preventing these individual threats relies on internal security rather than global subjugation on terrorism.

Bat Bombs- The American Plan to Beat Japan

As the Pacific war waged on bombing runs had begun on Japan. They were costly and caused severe devastation to both civilians and military personnel. This led a friend of Elanor Roselvelt named Lytle Adams. Lytle Adams was considered by many to be outside of the box thinker and told Elanor Rosevelt about an Idea he had. He believed that if you could attach a timed fire grenade to bats and release them at night the bats would naturally disperse into small cracks and holes in houses and then cause thousands of independent fires. When President Roosevelt found out he was interested and approved the project for military testing.

This project was considered extremely important and was treated very seriously, new bombs were developed along with modifications on planes to make them as effective as possible. The Project was named Project X-ray and was moved to a Marine Core base for testing. The test was incredibly successful starting hundreds of independent random fires. At this point, however Project X-ray was directly competing with the Manhattan project.

As the year reached 1945 the Navy decided to cancel project Xray due to its expensive nature and the fact that it was still in development while the Atomic bombs were closer to completion and had the added bonus of shock and awe. 

Trump's only chance to win Reelection

(Opinion Piece)
While it is surprised many that Trump became the president with hindsight it is apparent why. Trump's tactic of saying grandiose things to be in the media combined with comments like calling his supported "deplorable" created a sense of being an underdog for some people. This also created unity not only with Trump's base but with others who have been felt they have been ignored by the Obama Status quo. This region in the central and southern united states and the rust belt sided with Trump making his victory possible. I have doubts about whether this could occur this election.

Trump has very much lost steam. Believe it or not, he has become tamer and in a sense "moderate" then he was at the beginning of his presidency and at during the election. While this would not be a problem for normal candidates, President Trump is very reliant on the drama and turmoil to create attention and support. This has made many Democrats very hopeful but with this hope comes cracks that need to be addressed to beat Trump in the next election. If the crack is ignored it will ensure another victory to President Trump.

The Democratic Party was flooded with candidates while making things more interesting it is not a great thing for the party as a whole. With so many candidates come conflict of interest and division in the Democrat base as time moves forward. This combined with the factional elemets in the current democratic party (Old Guard VS New Guard) and it sets up a storm for internal conflict. While this is bad for the Democrats it is not groundbreaking. The Republican is also becoming more and more factionalized but the Democratic parties division is early becoming more and more visible.

Now even with the factional elements the Democrats still should have the upper hand. There is an overwhelming feeling among Democrats to get a new president and elections generally favor the more aggressive motivated base and the Democrats are very much on the attack. This is a massive plus to any candidate who wins the Democrat primaries but in my opinion which will determine the election is who the Democrats choose as their candidate.

If the Democrats choose someone "moderate" such as Biden or someone who is viewed as reasonable like Andrew Yang; Trump would most likely lose. If the Democrats someone like Bernie...that is a game changer. I am not here to attack the views of any of the candidates but Bernie to many is viewed as a Radical and a Communist (He is not though he is a Democratic Socialist we all know that's how some will perceive him) A candidate like Bernie is great for Trump because it gives him something to attack. It also reinvigorates his base which has grown more relaxed and weak.  Making America choose between these two would end up looking very much like the 2016 election in many peoples minds. Whos Worse? Unlike 2016 Trump is a sitting president and has his accomplishments to show off. Love him or Hate him he has followed through on a majority of his political promises and is running for reelection with a strong American economy. Change and new things to Americans can be a very scary thing and if that change is viewed as radical it makes a status quo vote much more appealing. That, of course, is my interpretation and speculation.

What do you think will happen in the next election?

Trickle Up or Down

Ronald Reagan is famous for his "Reaganomics" policy, in which he highlights the importance of sponsoring the higher class by cutting taxes in order to solve economic stagnancy. He explained that the accumulation of wealth in the higher class would cause money to trickle down to the rest of American society, revitalizing the flow of currency. However, there was no real incentive for the higher class to spend the money, especially during times of heavy inflation. As such, Reagan's economic policies only shifted the distribution of wealth ever more to the side of the rich upper class, causing a huge separation of wealth that lasted to this very day.

Fast-forward to contemporary society, Andrew Yang, who is running to become a 2020 presidential candidate, seeks to pump money into the economy as well. However, he focuses on giving everyone money. His campaign claim is that the government would fund every American $1,000 dollars each month. His argument comes from a different perspective - that the rapid replacement of jobs by autonomous systems would require the government to facilitate a transition of occupations. The $1,000 dollars would be a safety fund to help make this massive transition. From Yang's viewpoint, America is facing a challenge that is almost the reverse of America's economic crisis in the 1970s and the 1980s. Rather than a stagnant economy, America's economy is growing at such a rapid pace that it is abandoning workers from the lower economic echelon of society whose jobs are being occupied by autonomous systems that are being developed at equal speed. As such, although the economy is spiraling in a different direction as it was in the late 1970s, the United States faces the same epidemic of rising unemployment.


Would this concept of pumping money directly into the economy actually work, especially under a different circumstance of an already-prospering economy? Yang argues that as oppose to the "trickle down" strategy, his strategy would allow money to "trickle up." Since his target for this program encompasses all Americans, it would be especially influential to those in the lower economic rank who would value the $1,000 dollars more than the already-rich. According to Yang, this money would not only allow them to take more time from work to learn and adapt into a different occupation - one that will not be immediately dominated by autonomous systems, but also give them more buying power. As such, the money would end up in the hands of corporations that dominate the consumer market. Yang believes that the role of the government is to extract this money from the corporations through the form of more stringent taxes and thus facilitate the cycle and distribution of money between the rich and the poor. In that sense, the projected effects of his policy is very much different from the actual effects of Reaganomics. Instead of widening the gap of wealth, Yang attempts to mend it with a solution that also addresses the current trend of autonomous technology.

Another point of difference between the two policies is that Reagan actively cut federal spending. Yang, who believes that the government is facilitating this transaction of money between corporations and average individuals, encourages federal spending because the money would just cycle back to the government. Reagan did not achieve his objective of increasing the federal budget, however. Instead, due to the ineffective income tax cuts, he had nearly tripled the federal debt. While Yang's plan does not seem to have this problem due to government income from conglomerates, it would indicate excessive government interference with corporations, and also a difficult situation for the government as it becomes the centerpiece of an unsustainable economy.

The US-China Trade War

Throughout history, as technology advanced, the world became increasingly interconnected. Not only are people able to communicate with others halfway around the world, but innovations in transportation allow goods to be shipped to anywhere on the planet, unlocking international trade and increasing global prosperity. However, this capability is not without its consequences, a major one being an increased number of conflicts.

In January 2018, the trade war between the United States and China, the two largest countries by GDP, kicked off when the Trump administration placed tariffs on imported solar panels and washing machines, both of which China exports in massive quantities. Two months later, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminum. In a statement released by the White House, the President justified the tariffs placed on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese goods using Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, citing China’s theft of intellectual property and technology and unfair trade practices. On April 1, China responded by enacting tariffs on 128 American products, including pork products, fruit, and wine.

As the conflict escalated and trade talks fail to yield a resolution, people disagreed on the benefits of the trade war and the optimal way to end it. Unlike most modern-day issues, the matter of the trade war with China is not one where people are solely divided along party lines. The supporters of the trade war, led by President Trump, believe the United States should continue its tough approach levying tariffs until a favorable trade deal is reached, while its opposition believes that the war should be ended immediately and that the two superpowers should accomplish their trade goals through negotiations and mutual policy reform.

The trade war is an economic conflict between the United States and China that has major repercussions on everyday life. The future of international relations and the global economy is greatly dependent upon its outcome.

Sources:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/the-timeline-of-trump-china-tariffs-and-trade-war.html

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-donald-j-trump-additional-proposed-section-301-remedies/

http://fortune.com/2018/04/02/china-tariffs-128-us-products/

Laika: The Space Dog

Shortly after the launch of Sputnik, the US public was stunned by another Soviet launch less than a month later. This particular satellite was sent to orbit around the earth while also containing the first living organism, a dog named Laika. While Laika's voyage showed that an organism could survive the weightlessness and the initial launch, as she apparently survived for about 4-7 days in space, it turns out that she died within a few hours.

Laika started as a stray on the streets of Moscow before she began he path to fame. She was chosen as a stray with the belief that she would be more prepared to the cold and the little amount of food that she would receive during her voyage. To prepare her, they would send her up in high altitude rockets and confine her to extremely small spaces in order to simulate her journey.

Finally, on November 3rd, 1957, she was launched into space on the Sputnik 2 becoming the first living organism to orbit the planet. This shocked the world but also caused outrage when the public realized that there was no plan to get her down from orbit as that technology hadn't been invented yet. Furthermore, she had to endure terrifying conditions throughout her short-lived flight such as being chained forward and confined to a tiny space.

Soviet engineers and scientists had designed the satellite to try and keep Laika alive as long as possible by using a fan to regulate temperatures, feeding her food, circulating oxygen, and providing a system of waste disposal for her. Despite these measures, most scientists agreed that she would be dead within a week.

The Soviet Union officially reported that she had died on day six due to either an oxygen shortage or a controlled euthanization using food poisoning over time, but these accounts varied for the next 4 decades. Finally, in 2002, a scientist who worked on the mission revealed that she had died within her 4th orbit or less than 5 hours. The stress of being launched shot her heart rate up 3 to 4 fold and she never truly recovered from that. But her main cause of death is considered to be overheating as part of the rocket did not properly separate, affecting the temperature control.

Nowadays, there are multiple monuments to her and her contributions to space travel in Russia and she remains an important part of space history today.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/sad-story-laika-space-dog-and-her-one-way-trip-orbit-1-180968728/
https://www.space.com/38660-laika-space-dog-launch-60th-anniversary.html

Historical References in Forrest Gump

Many of us have seen or at least heard of the movie Forrest Gump. If you haven't, it is about a man, named Forrest Gump, that has a below average IQ, growing up in the fictional town of Greenbow Alabama. Being born in 1944, he lives through much of the Cold War, Civil Rights Movement, and many other historical events we have studied this year.

First, a man named Elvis Presley goes to stay at Forrest's childhood house for a few days and his mom finds him in a room with Elvis, dancing to the guitar. A later in the movie, he sees Elvis on TV doing the same dance Forrest did at his house. Elvis Presley was a very influential singer in the genre of Rock n' Roll which captivated young audiences for his radical style during the 1950s. He introduced many common topics in this genre like sex and drugs.  

Forrest's mother mentions that she named him after the Civil war hero, Nathan Bedford Forrest who founded the Klu Klux Klan during the 1800's. The movie shows a clip from the controversial film The Birth of a Nation with Tom Hanks' face in place of Nathan Bedford Forrest in the movie. This movie was an extremely racist film and showed some of the worst stereotypes of African Americans in the US. However, this movie was popular when it was released which reflects the country's racist views on African Americans.
 

One major event seen in the movie is the Vietnam War, when Forrest enlists in the army. After graduating from college, making the All American Football team and meeting president Kennedy, Forrest goes through training and flies out to Vietnam. In this part of the movie you can see the Guerrilla Warfare tactics used by the Viet kong against the American soldiers, when Lieutenant Dan warns forrest about snipers everywhere but you can never see them.  The Vietnam War was supported at first but after the war went on, people wanted to be finished with it. There were too many casualties and the people felt it wasn't worth it. When Nixon became president, he instated a policy of Vietnamization which eventually lead to the end of the war.

After being injured in battle, Forrest returns to the US injured with an gunshot to his butt. In the hospital, Forrest learns of ping pong and instantly becomes interested in the sport. He eventually gets so good at it that he was sent to China in Ping Pong Diplomacy in hopes of reducing tension between China and the US during the Cold War.


Other parts of the movie reference hippies, the Black Panther Party, and John Lennon. Jenny Curran, a childhood friend of forrest, is supposed to be a hippie in this movie. They were people that advocated for peace in the world, along with experimenting with lots of drugs, as seen in the movie. Forrest and Jenny end up going to a Black Panther meeting, where one of the leaders explains to Forrest that they are opposed to the war in Vietnam because black soldiers were giving their lives to a country that wasn't treating them very well. Forrest wasn't listening to him very much though.


Some of my favorite parts of the movie are just of Forrest being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Governor Wallace was the racist governor of Alabama at the time and in 1963 refused to let two black students in at the University of Alabama. In the movie, Forrest is seen in the background just looking around. The Watergate scandal is also seen in this movie when Forrest stayed at a hotel right next to the Watergate and sees the break in happen before his eyes. However, Forrest doesn't see this as a break in and tells security that the people must be lost and the power must have been out. It's assumed that this was how the burglars were caught.



Source:
http://forestgumpapush.weebly.com/historical-references-in-the-movie.html