A brief summary of the following rant:

In case you don’t want to read the entire rant that is so conveniently below; here’s a summary of the basis. Green Day is a punk rock group that is blatant in their political opinions, wears a lot of skinny jeans and ties (only ironically though), and represents the angst age of all teenagers. Their song “American Idiot” is a political critique of American media and the general don’t care attitude of any angst teenager. The song talks about how we, as teenagers, are not listened to because of this don’t care mindset. We don’t care. We simply don’t. Because why would we spend time and energy expressing an opinion when I can scroll through Facebook for hours on end. We are too controlled by our media and the ideals that it spoon-feeds us to care. We are, “one nation controlled by the media.”

Early September 2004, the popular rock alt group Green Day released their American Idiot album, filled with political anti-war themes, was released with an intense degree of success. The album follows the story of "Jesus of Suburbia" as it vibrantly paints feelings expressed during the Bush's Iraqi War. However, the most popular single on the album, and its namesake, "American Idiot" expresses very specific opinion about American media and it's involvement in our lives.

Not only it’s the band a figurehead for the “I don’t give a F***” teenage attitude and way of life, American Idiot also plays off of this idea. With lyrics like,

“Television dreams of tomorrow.

We're not the ones who're meant to follow.

For that's enough to argue,”

This message becomes incredibly clear. Any parent of a teenager can tell you that we have a lot of opinions. The majority of them are based off of our sexual insecurities and frustration, as well as our belief that we, under developed, hormonal teenagers, are the focal point of the universe. However, because we don’t care or pretend not to, we don’t vocalize these crucial opinions.

We also have the tendency to believe our media more then anything; we are the Internet age. The first thing we look at in the morning is the latest on every form of social media. It is also the last thing we look at every night. Because of this, the media has had this magical effect where if someone smart looking says something smart sounding, we will believe it. Through our attempt of rebellion and individualization, we become the mindless zombies of human beings that we make fun everyday.

It is the popular opinion of the Baby Boomers that us Millennials aren’t contributing to society. We aren’t walking to school, uphill, both ways, in the snow with no shoes on!! We have no “opinions” therefore we must know nothing. Ha. Ha. Ha. That’s funny considering the majority of Millennials I know, are the most politically informed people today. However, no one listens to us and we are too busy sub-tweeting people we hate, to actually present our selves, truly.

Everyone with access to eyeballs knows the power that the media can have on us as functional human beings. I can’t count the nights I stayed up refreshing my twitter feed or my tumblr page because some celeb smack down was going on, or even some giant social movement was going on. Recently, I’ve been doing this a lot with all of the feminist hashtags like #YesAllWomen or #FreeTheNipple. But there are some nights where I’m just looking at funny memes for like 4 hours instead of doing homework, like this blog post. In some way or another, this can be seen as a form of propaganda.

The amazing thing about propaganda is that it has power. It has the power to inspire us and to strike fear into our hearts. Take Trump, everyone’s favourite political garbage can. He uses his speeches and tweets and new comments and slogans to make us panic about immigration, and the greatness of the US of A. Turnip Trump is able to use modern propaganda to make us paranoid, and he does a really good job of it.

This idea can be seen in the lyrics,

“Now everybody do the propaganda.

And sing along to the age of paranoia.”

Again, not only does this demonstrate how controlled we by our media, but how easily it can turn against us and make us scared to be humans.

I personally love this song and the whole album (I’ve actually been listening to it on repeat whilst writing this). Plus they have a musical... like gahhh!!



I grew up listening to Green Day and so did all of my sisters. People like to assume that because I’m “sweet” and “innocent” looking that I don’t listen or even like artists like Green Day, but in fact, it’s kind of the exact opposite. (I am getting off tack. Damn! Focusssssss. Okay.) As far of the messages in the song, I couldn’t agree more. There are days where I find myself so glued to my phone that my thumb starts hurting from scrolling. But as I’m getting older (Ugh. I sound like a Baby Boomer) that I look at my past behaviour and everything that I went through, still go through, and will go through, is said in this song. Hundred of artists have picked up on the idea that our media controls us and the pieces that they create are amazing.

Okay, this really long rant is over. Probably. If I forgot to mention anything, I can just say “I do not give a F***” and go eat some pizza.