ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book defines key terms (disinformation and ideology), using the work of the French political theorist Louis Althusser, and within the context of these definitions analyzes the state of the union in the US in the post-Great Recession era. It studies the disconnect between political language and political reality in the United States in the post-Great Recession era of social, political, economic, and environmental crisis—and seriously unaddressed climate change is only going to intensify economic inequality and thus political repression. The book traces the history of Barack Obama's repudiation of the Reverend Wright's two sermons in the 2008 Philadelphia speech Obama gave on race, which marks Obama's commitment to the exceptionalist narrative. It further focuses on the term "confidence", which since the Great Recession of 2008 appears ubiquitously in discussions of the state of the union.