Orwellian

Watching Barack Obama’s 5th State of the Union address it and he may as well have been delivering the state of the Union for the Superstate Oceania, the fictional empire mired in perpetual war from George Orwell’s 1984. No, Obama did not come directly out and tell us that war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength so much as he embodied those ideas in a nuanced, measured performance that inspired the political pundits like Chris Matthews to wax poetic like a Theatre critic praising and aging stage actor who was able to find the old magic one last time. Lee Camp and I discuss the (actual) state of the union, Obama’s “all of the above” energy policy as it relates to jobs, corporate profits and the climate crisis, and how blindly “supporting for the troops” is unhealthy for children and all other living things.