Billie Joe Armstrong is an American Idiot

And Green Day is not a punk rock band

Once upon a time, there was a young man from Oakland, California named Billie Joe.

Billie Joe liked music, but hated authority. So he started a punk rock band to make music that shared his hatred for authority. He spent his every waking hour raging.

He raged against things he believed were bad: rich people, politicians, governmental overreach, unfettered capitalism, morality codes, and stuffy social mores. Mostly, though, he hated authoritarian figures, whoever and wherever they were.

He stopped taking showers, wore eyeliner, covered his body in tattoos, and dyed his hair funny colors like blue and green in order to stand out.

He used profanity in his songs and shouted on stage against the injustice he saw: injustices committed by rich people, old people, business people, and crooked politicians.

He used his primitive guitar-playing skills to great effect: his sloppy power chords and simple song structures were lazy but efficient. His band’s tunes were just like him: short, simple, and dirty.

He loved to make people squirm, especially by using gross words in his songs that horrified and angered old, conservative people his parents’ age. He sang songs about semen and poop, being stoned on drugs, having mental illness, visiting transsexual prostitutes, and masturbating.

He was disgusted by arbitrary rules, social conformity, and censorship. He didn’t want the government telling him what he could and couldn’t say or do with his own body.

On and on, day and night, he raged.

He raged in his homeland, America, and he even raged across the sea. He flew 5,000 miles over the ocean and told the people in England: “Don’t let these bastards dictate your life or try to tell you what to do, alright?”

Billie Joe was repugnant to the boring adults who mindlessly obeyed authority, and delightful to the rebellious teenagers who fought “The System.”

When a man named George was elected to the presidency, Billie Joe raged against him. He hated George.

Billie Joe wanted to show people just how stupid George was and how stupid all the people who supported him were.

He raged so hard against George that his anger became an all-consuming obsession: he wrote music specifically to mock George: one song called “Favorite Son” was added to an album called “Rock Against Bush,” and another entire album called “American Idiot” was purely devoted to his rage against George and his supporters.

After all, George stood for unjust wars, the killing of civilians, American hubris, a criminal justice system that arrested people unfairly and threatened to imprison them if they refused to obey laws that were immoral and arbitrary.

George increased the power of the government significantly, erasing the personal freedoms of Americans and infringing on their constitutional rights.

He passed a law that grew the size and scope of the authoritarian state to spy on his own people, interfere in their private affairs, and jail them for things that weren’t crimes. …and it was all done under the guise of “doing it for their own good.”

But it wasn’t for their own good. It was wrong and he knew it. Billie Joe was part of The Resistance — he fought against The Establishment.

Billie Joe raged. He raged loudly and often.

When a man named Barack was elected to the presidency, surprisingly, Billie Joe didn’t rage against Barack. In fact, he loved Barack.

Billie Joe wanted to show people just how wonderful Barack was and how stupid all the people who didn’t support him were.

Like George before him, though, Barack also increased the power of the government significantly, erasing the personal freedoms of Americans and infringing on their constitutional rights.

Barack also stood for unjust wars, the killing of civilians, American hubris, a criminal justice system that arrested people unfairly and threatened to imprison them if they refused to obey laws that were immoral and arbitrary.

He passed a different law that grew the size and scope of the authoritarian state to spy on his own people, interfere in their private affairs, and jail them for things that weren’t crimes. …and it was once again done under the guise of “doing it for their own good.”

But this time, Billie Joe didn’t rage.

Sometimes, he didn’t even keep silent, instead choosing to publicly praise the man he should have raged against. Out loud and in public, he encouraged Americans to vote for him.

When a man named Joe was elected to the presidency, Billie Joe didn’t rage against Joe either. In fact, he loved Joe.

He still performed with his punk band and sang lyrics that decried unchecked power, rich men, and corrupt politicians—even as he watched unchecked power grow at the hands of rich men and corrupt politicians.

Once again, Billie Joe didn’t rage.

This time around, Billie Joe spent his days supporting an incompetent kleptocracy with an insatiable hunger for stealing money from the people, spending it on things they found repulsive, and funding overseas wars.

That’s because a funny thing had happened to him: Billie Joe had become rich. He was now popular. He was now endowed with prestige and privilege.

Billie Joe had turned into the very thing he had opposed; the exact embodiment of everything he formerly hated.

When a deadly virus came to America, Billie Joe didn’t rage against authority, but rather, in favor of it.

It no longer bothered him that he was now on the side of the shadowy cabal of faceless people in power, who enforced arbitrary rules, social conformity, and, most of all, censorship.

He now wanted the government telling people precisely what they could and couldn’t say or do with their own bodies.

Green Day, once called a ‘punk rock’ band, had now become a mouthpiece for the puppets in power. They cheered for even more authority to the state, which sought to jail nonviolent people, stoked racial tensions for political gain, and insisted on jabbing citizens with needles against their will or ending their careers in retaliation if they didn’t comply.

The same man who once sang: “Don’t wanna be an American idiot,” “I praise liberty,” and “Hear the sound of the falling rain coming down like an Armageddon flame” was now silent in the face of endless foreign wars.

When a man named Donald was elected to the presidency, Billie Joe once again found his rage, so he raged against him. He hated Donald.

Except that now, Billie Joe was no longer part of The Resistance — he was now, firmly, part of The Establishment.

Yet, Billie Joe still raged. He raged loudly and often.

He raged this time, as a member of the system.

He raged in favor of authority.

He raged in favor of power.

He raged against freedom, against reducing the size of government, against lowering spending, against defunding war, against ending politicized justice systems, and against personal autonomy.

Billie Joe was a rich, powerful man in America, wealthier than 99% of all the people in the entire world.

His band, Green Day, stopped being a punk rock band for good and was now an embarrassing mockery of what it used to be; a tool of the state, spreading government propaganda.

One day, in 2025, Billie Joe, a man from the West Coast with a hillbilly name, for no reason—and without provocation—picked a fight in public with an actual hillbilly from Ohio who was now America’s Vice President.

Once again, he insulted his own government while overseas, during a concert, asking: “Am I retarded, or am I just JD Vance?”

And it was at this precise moment that Billie Joe jumped the shark entirely, proving forever that he had become completely irrelevant—just like his band’s last three albums.

This man, now old enough to be a grandpa, spends his days as just another shill for a huge bureaucracy; a blob that embraces cancellation, restrictions on speech, and punishment for people who commit thought crimes.

Billie Joe Armstrong is not JD Vance. He may be retarded. But what’s worse is that he is an American Idiot who is too stupid to notice he became what he once despised.

The End.

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