State of the Union
In one of many incidents since arriving in France that have served to point out how uninformed, in general, I am about world news and American politics, I learned that the State of the Union had been given last night from a Facebook status update by a friend from Norway. And so I watched it on YouTube, where it had been posted in English and Farsi by a guy in Iran, and marveled about how cool technology is, and how strange it is that our politics are so widely followed. I liked the things he said about education. When Obama kept saying "both" parties, I thought about how bitter the independents and the tinier parties must be that they never get mentioned seriously. I liked that he called people out on denying the "overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change". I felt kind of awkward when he addressed Congress like a classroom full of children, asking them not to get in each other's way just because they could. I felt even awkwarder when the military ...