So there’s a big part about Obama, but the song is also about me. I mean, I am very sickened to watch Obama at SXSW declaring America a pretty great place when Europe is heaving under the weight of 25 years of American foreign policy, with millions of refugees fleeing a region that America destabilized. How can he really humor that insular delusion when America’s footprint is that of an immense perpetrator upon the rest of the world that’s not really willing to account for itself or take its own inventory? If Obama isn’t willing to take that inventory, just as he wasn’t willing to take the inventory of the previous administration’s war crimes, then what future does representational government have? There's no future for this kind of government, because we’ve only got a few years left. The jig is almost up. We were looking for a hero when we elected him, and we got a bipartisan compromiser.

Remember how everyone was so afraid he would be assassinated? Little did we have to worry about that! There was no reason to fear his assassination. He wasn't going to dismantle systems. He wasn't going to harness the power of the American people whom he inspired to elect him. He wasn't going to create that mass movement that was going to force the hand of change. And now, at the 11th hour, he's dialing in a weak climate agenda, and the world is supposed to applaud? It's just disgusting to me. We've wasted another decade on an issue that we didn't have five minutes left on.

He was elected on a platform of transparency and he was supposed to name the truth. He hasn't done that. He hasn't made it so American people could understand what was really happening to them. In many ways, he set the stage for someone like Trump, because he didn't take his opportunity to educate all people as to why it was that they were so disempowered. He had eight years to convince poor white people that the reason they were fucked was because of the trickle down economics of the Reagan administration, and he bypassed that opportunity. He didn't dismantle Murdoch's media empire, which could practically elect Sarah Palin or a Trump singlehandedly; regardless of whether he says he supports Trump or not, the bottom line is Trump is the end product of the Murdoch media. And let's not forget he was the one who swept the entire Occupy Movement off the face of this earth, just like they had once swept the Black Panthers off the face of this earth.

So I am extremely disappointed in President Obama, and I don't see why I should have to shy away from that disappointment just because things are even worse now than they were when he was elected. I think he failed because we're still on the same trajectory. America has no real idea of the extent to which it abuses its authority and power.

And I'm someone that campaigned around the world for him when he was running for president the first time through. He once said that people project what they want onto him—their own issues and their beliefs—almost like a reflecting pool. And of course it was true. So I can express my anger with him, but at the same time, I have to hold myself accountable. I was the one seeking a silver bullet, casting a passive vote, such that I didn't have to participate more meaningfully. I think that's what most of us did: We cast a passive vote and saw how the dreams fall.

What is your impression of all that? How does it sit with you?

He maintained the status quo. He's a good speaker and he smiles, and that goes a long way with people.

And he's intelligent and accessible and he plays identity politics in such a way that we feel included.

And people love his wife and his kids.

His wife—who is relegated to, like, taking care of fat children, who has more of an education than he does? You know what I mean?

Still, at this point, when I watch him on TV, I think, God, I'm going to miss him, because even if he hasn't done what he said he was going to do...

At least he seems to be on your level.

He seems like an intelligent person.

But if an intelligent person can only behave as well as Bill Clinton, what use is he? We're still sliding down the hill into oblivion. We needed a heroic person who was going to take a tremendous risk, not just the measured risk of someone who cried crocodile tears over Sandy Hook and then has children in another country drone bombed and killed without even mentioning it in the media. What the fuck is that?

He has evoked Martin Luther King, who was nonviolent. Where's his principle of nonviolence? He’s measuring the potential cost of feet on the ground versus random and inaccurate executions of swaths of poor people with his drone campaign and his military industrial complex.

I think that's why Bernie Sanders is doing a lot better than people would have imagined.

He's raising that same specter of hope. And young people are trying again. They haven't given up. They want someone to tell the truth. They want someone to dismantle the system as it is today. Sanders has a longer record of being able to do that. Obama actually had no record of doing that.