Jello Biafra pontificates on a number of issues that I personally find important: the need for teenagers and young adults to have free access to entertainment, music and media of their choice; the banality and anti-aestheticism of "mainstream suburbia" and the suit-and-tie, Christmas-shopping, pro-sports mentality fed to us in the media (that's how their corporate sponsors make money after all).
But here Biafra is much more concerned with the economics playing behind the scenes. Rather than "whine" about Tipper Gore, the PMRC and their efforts to deny people under a certain age certain types of albums (and movies, video games, possibly even live concerts), here Biafra goes into a much more powerful threat to freedom and democracy: corporate power and the DE FACTO censorship and authoritarianism it brings. You could best think of this album as a rebuttal to conservative economist Milton Friedman's book CAPITALISM AND FREEDOM.
This album was recorded in late 1997/early 1998, the era of anti-gang paranoia, the Newt Gingrich regime, NAFTA, drug wars, welfare reform, and Wall Street uber-alles. Biafra clearly points out President Clinton's repeated concessions to the conservative right, not just the Wall Street right but also cultural reactionaries (one of which would have been first lady had the Supreme Court not handed the 2000 pres election to Bush). This frustration over pro-corporate, pro-suburbia, anti-marijuana, anti-musical freedom "liberal" Democrats was certainly at least part of the fuel behind Ralph Nader's 2000 campaign.
Biafra points out, very honestly, that the corporate media deliberately blames society's problems on everything except the real cause (how screwed up our economic system is (this is a verbatim quote)), which not only unnecessarily scapegoats innocent people like Marilyn Manson and divides the nation among race and culture lines, but assures that the real problems will never be solved.
Of course, to inspire the people for social change, he also gives examples of how Russians and Eastern Europeans overthrew their communist-by-name-only regimes and set up democracies run, in some cases, by rock musicians! Granted, neocapitalist fervor has been pushed too hard on the ex-"communist" countries, but the basic idea of a mass of people overthrowing a corrupt and elitist political regime is definitely something that a democratic socialist like myself can wholeheartedly support!
After listening to this album you too will be inspired to renounce the capitalist economic ideology and dream of the day when America will experience a general strike. Even if you don't agree with Biafra's (or my) quasi-socialist philosophy of wealth, work and property, you will be forced to admit that America is going down the tubes and that "It's the economic system, [...]"
