It’s early 2021. We’ve all been in lockdown. We’ve watched protests spark all over the country following George Floyd’s murder. Joe Biden took office a few months before, but Donald Trump’s base is just as radicalized and moved, even after watching a failed insurrection on TV. I’m scrolling through TikTok and see a video of some fratty looking 22 year old. “Thank God my mom didn’t raise a fucking liberal,” he screams as the wind whips his hair peaking out from under a white trucker hat as he speeds down a stretch of road. He cranks up the music.
The song he’s playing is Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.” An anti-war protest song that mocks jingoistic, blind patriotism and an unjust war. People are dunking on him in the comment section for playing a song that doesn’t really align with his politics, and for how he’s screaming along.
I click his profile, and I look at the next video. He makes a similar comment, shows his “Trump 2024” flag and blasts Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” In the next video, he screams, “This one is gonna piss off the stupid liberals” as he puts on a Make America Great Again hat while Green Day’s “American Idiot” plays. He’s trolling, but it doesn’t seem like he’s smart enough to really make any sort of point. He’s perusing for engagement of people saying he’s stupid for using these songs, but he also doesn’t seem like he’s trying to parlay it into anything other than some dumb conservative clout.
I checked his page today at the start of 2024, and he has videos of him in a club. “You libs are jokes,” he wrote on the screen while Macklemore’s “Can’t Hold Us” plays over speakers. Macklemore’s politics almost certainly don’t line up with his, but the song also isn’t even remotely political. It’s almost like he’s used “liberal” as a stand in for anyone who doesn’t want to party, which is what a lot of Republicans would make you think liberals are: people who just don’t want you or anyone to ever have fun again.
During Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacret, Green Day took the stage and ushered in an election year with a song that feels just as relevant as it did when it was released 20 years ago: “American Idiot.” While there are certain aspects of the song that may not have aged well (the homophobic slur in the second verse), the message has mostly remained steadfast. As Green Day have become sort of a classic rock act, Billie Joe Armstrong has informed younger fans who may not have known what exactly the message was in the original song as he altered one lyric from “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” to “I’m not a part of a MAGA agenda.” The words changed, but the meaning has remained the same.
That clip of their performance went viral, and it was subsequently talked about on Fox News. I know it’s been decades since Green Day has been a DIY punk band, but it still baffles me that people who know nothing about this subculture feel like they can comment on it. “I just never thought that I would see a band that’s supposed to be against everything, raging for the machine, because that’s what they do when they talk smack about the MAGA, about regular people who are being crushed. So keep on raging for the machine, fellas,” one woman said on one of Fox’s daytime talk shows.
During one of the more newsy seeming Fox shows, a woman also blissfully played ignorant as she asked what Armstrong meant when he switched the lyric to “MAGA agenda,” even though I’m confident that she understood exactly what he meant. “I think that it’s imperative to define what they mean when they say ‘MAGA agenda.’ Does that mean lower crime? Does that mean actually secure borders? Does that mean better economy? Maybe he is raging against the machine if that’s what he’s asking for,” she said. She ignored the fact that Republicans maintain a majority in the Supreme Court and the House, and crime is lower now than it was under Trump, and Biden has been tougher on border security than Trump. Economy is the one thing that they can make a case for, and even that is a stretch. Most of Trump’s claims about the economy have been debunked. Sidebar: it is a little funny that the broadcasters keeps referencing Rage Against The Machine in an attempt to seem like they know things.
The funniest moment came though when who I assume was the lead anchor essentially said, “This was a political song when it came out, but since it’s not being politicized against someone I like, it’s bad.” The real quote is: “The original song was actually a post-9/11 song, because the band at the time was upset about what was happening overseas and the Iraq war and all that, and it’s probably their biggest hit. Now, to continue to make it political, you’re just alienating people.”
While we can pretend that this is the first time that Green Day has ever made a political statement, it’s not. It was probably a very slow news day at Fox, and they figured that they could capitalize on outrage about a song that’s 20 years old. While early in the band’s career, they were apolitical, the band has never really hid their distaste for the former president, like when they interpolated MDC’s “Born to Die” into their mediocre song “Bang Bang” at the 2016 American Music Awards, when they chanted “No Trump. No KKK. No Facist U.S.A.”
Look for videos on YouTube. There are tons of clips of Armstrong screaming “Fuck you, Donald Trump” during performances of the song. It’s very clear who he has in mind when playing “American Idiot” now. He’s even thrown that line about not being a part of a MAGA agenda in a few times before.
Even though this whole piece has essentially been me writing “look at how stupid people are for not realizing what the song is about,” I also don’t want to tell people that may not agree with the band’s politics not to listen. I think that a lot of people’s first introduction to politics came from listening to American Idiot in 2004. While the left-leaning ideas are entry level, you do need to start somewhere. While the message may not always get in, hopefully some aspects do. Many people who grew up on Green Day’s music now have kids of their own, and they may not agree with the politics, but they might still play the songs for their kids. Perhaps the next generation will absorb the messages that their parents missed. There are plenty of people who missed the meaning on those Springsteen and CCR songs, but their kids got it. Trump even attended the opening night of the American Idiot Broadway musical. It doesn’t seem like he got the message.
As Armstrong sings with his side-project Pinhead Gunpowder, “Revolution begins at home, but for most of us, it ends there too.”
I’m left recalling a very specific eye-opening experience from when I was in high school. The American Idiot musical had come out when I was a junior, and I owned a t-shirt which had a set of knuckles with the words “Rage” and “Love” written on them. I went to a movie wearing the shirt, and some guy who looked like he was maybe in his 20s or 30s, told me, “It’s a cool band, but it’s not cool that they tell people how to think.” I understand the sentiment, but in retrospect, I realize that that guy was probably just a republican who was sad that Green Day wasn’t playing songs about masturbating anymore.
Ultimately, I don’t really think that any band that I’ve listened to has actively told fans how to think. Part of being an informed listener is doing research and learning more about why they’re saying what they say. There’s only so much politics you can fit in a 3 minute pop song. Where that guy missed the point was he heard a band that just wrote songs that said “we don’t support the president,” and he didn’t bother diving into why they didn’t support the president. I think most of the people left wondering why the band changed the lyric to “I’m not a part of a MAGA agenda” are too lazy to do a little research and understand why the band would be against Trump.
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