It was during the second W administration.
that my friend was briefly pregnant by the man she once said raped her
And no one believed she could have gone back. They said she faked.

We're also fighting a war overseas, with the purpose of hunting down the evildoers and bringing them to justice. And I'm patient and I'm focused, and I will not yield. We must win.

This was during the second W administration.
It was during the second W administration
that my friend was briefly pregnant by the man she once said raped her
and I can't believe she could have gone back. They say she faked.
This was during the second W administration.


As Sylvia Plath once said, I do it exceptionally well
As Sylvia Plath once said, I do it so it feels like hell


Note: I don't normally think artists should explain what their songs mean, but this one is pretty obviously intended to defend an alleged victim against skepticism and isolation from friends who sided with her alleged attacker, if either of them exist, which it clearly wouldn't be my business to reveal, if the song were based on anything like a true story.

In child development classes, you read about psychologists who believe it's important for parents to read scary stories to children, because the children see the parents go back from sounding like monsters right back to being parents, and kids learn that society is mostly okay even if we all get scared sometimes, and kids might also learn that they have to use their own judgment to decide whether and when to trust people.

I spent hours trying to find a quote responding to allegations that the 2000 election was stolen, and eventually just settled on a famous quote about claiming war was a simple battle between good and evil, from someone thought to have stolen an election and thought to have lied in order to start a war, who then went on to cleanly win the 2004 election in a landslide.

If this song disturbs you, good. It disturbs me, too. Sometimes art should disturb us. If Kim Kardashian goes back to Kanye West after he publicly threatens her and then drops off a truckload of flowers at her house, that would be disturbing, too, but it could happen, because America voted for its own possibly abusive ex. Try to believe survivors, because they might need your support, even while presuming innocence of the accused for legal purposes. You can be there for a friend in trauma, without wanting to throw your other friend in jail. Art should disturb us and get us to think through awful situations, so that when they happen, we have some idea how to stay compassionate, and keep our hearts.

Do I like singing in character as a monster? No. But I think this is an important song, and nobody else was going to sing it.