"I defend my family with my orange umbrella." This is a reference to Citibank. Their logo was the words "Citi" with an orange umbrella over the letters. The same Citibank who's lights the character in "Mistaken for Strangers" was mistaken for a stranger by his best friends. The character in this song is suffering in the uncertainty and angst of a world that seems to be crumbling around him. He's been conditioned by years of watching pharmaceutical commercials on Fox News that there is a pill for every problem, but it's not working this time. He loves his family and is never knowingly mean to anyone, but he knows so little - and he doesn't know it. The corporate-owned news channels he watches have been telling him what he thinks he already knows: he's a good person surrounded by freedom-hating people who want to kill him because they are jealous of his virtue. But the truth that is eluding him is that much of the rest of the world - people who love their families also - are suffering under the exploitation of the corporations that he is invested in. He's unaware, or unwilling to admit to himself, that his comfort is built on the suffering of others and it is this exploitation that is creating the backlash that he's so fearful of.
"I defend my family with my orange umbrella." This is a reference to Citibank. Their logo was the words "Citi" with an orange umbrella over the letters. The same Citibank who's lights the character in "Mistaken for Strangers" was mistaken for a stranger by his best friends. The character in this song is suffering in the uncertainty and angst of a world that seems to be crumbling around him. He's been conditioned by years of watching pharmaceutical commercials on Fox News that there is a pill for every problem, but it's not working this time. He loves his family and is never knowingly mean to anyone, but he knows so little - and he doesn't know it. The corporate-owned news channels he watches have been telling him what he thinks he already knows: he's a good person surrounded by freedom-hating people who want to kill him because they are jealous of his virtue. But the truth that is eluding him is that much of the rest of the world - people who love their families also - are suffering under the exploitation of the corporations that he is invested in. He's unaware, or unwilling to admit to himself, that his comfort is built on the suffering of others and it is this exploitation that is creating the backlash that he's so fearful of.