How a ’70s punk rock band predicted modern America

Watching America's Holiday in Cambodia Unfold.

America’s surreal course under social justice dogma has veered the nation away from its Judeo-Christian, covenantal foundations toward a neo-Marxist destruction that is targeting all things good.  America’s borders, currency, economy, Constitution, journalism, food supplies, law enforcement, families, women, children, the very Rule of Law — all and more are being systematically eviscerated by a self-immolating cult of hatred disguised as tolerance and inclusivity.  The one-party totalitarianism that is its end goal is in plain sight.

In this dark milieu, lyrics from the once famous punk rock band Dead Kennedys have taken on a newfound relevance (in addition to the apparent effort of the Biden administration to add another dead Kennedy to America’s account, by denying Secret Service protection to presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)  The iconic 1970s punk rock band embraced many of the anti-establishment (neo-Marxist) ideas of today’s runaway youth but became disenchanted by the influx of Nazi skinheads, macho hardcore, and sappy yuppies that moth-fluttered to the punk scene.

In response, the band released its best known song in 1978, “Holiday in Cambodia.”  The catchy but creepy ditty ridicules the soft liberal romanticization of inner-city ghettos and the naïve ignorance that seeds regimes such as Pol Pot’s.  In the frenetic 2024 social justice “warrior” hysteria, the once-bizarre Dead Kennedys lyrics resurface as prescient:

So, you’ve been to school for a year or two
And you know you’ve seen it all
In daddy’s car, thinking you’ll go far
Back east your type don’t crawl

Playing ethnicky jazz to parade your snazz
On your five-grand stereo
Braggin’ that you know how the n------ feel cold
And the slums got so much soul

It’s time to taste what you most fear
Right Guard will not help you here
Brace yourself, my dear
Brace yourself, my dear

It’s a holiday in Cambodia
It’s tough, kid, but it’s life
It’s a holiday in Cambodia
Don’t forget to pack a wife

You’re a star-belly sneetch, you suck like a leech
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss a-- while you b----, so you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you

Well, you’ll work harder with a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers ’til you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake

Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son
What you need, my son

Is a holiday in Cambodia
Where people dress in black
Need a holiday in Cambodia
Where you’ll kiss a-- or crack

Pol Pot, Pol Pot
Pol Pot, Pol Pot
Pol Pot, Pol Pot
Pol Pot, Pol Pot

And it’s a holiday in Cambodia
Where you’ll do what you’re told
A holiday in Cambodia
Where the slums got so much soul

Pol Pot

Also snidely prophetic was the band’s 1986 album Bedtime for Democracy.  The cover artwork of a defaced Statue of Liberty overrun with media, Nazis, corrupt government officials, and general mayhem presaged eerily today’s deteriorating nation.  Even Dead Kennedys did not imagine millions of illegal fentanyl-dealing aliens streaming over then-secure borders or a national debt of $34.5 trillion ($772 billion in 1978).  Despite economic struggles, the budget deficit for 1978 was merely $59 billion versus $2.77 trillion for 2023.

In 1978, the Vietnam War cast a pall over America, and the economy was wobbling under persistent stagflation.  It is understandable that youth disillusioned by societal ills would be beguiled by sweet-sounding promises of Utopia, leaping thoughtlessly from the capitalist frying pan into the socialist fire.  But inevitably, reality forces its way through.  Typical of socialist millionaires (à la Bernie Sanders or Tom Morello) amassing wealth via their anti-capitalist rants, Dead Kennedys band members fought bitterly for years over royalties and song rights.  Band member D.H. Peligro, who also played drums later for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, became the first dead Dead Kennedy following a heroin/fentanyl overdose in 2022.

America now witnesses punk art come to life, as clueless middle-class white suburbanites glorify inner-city “thug life” while chanting hip-hop lyrics, government eviscerates the family unit by usurping parenthood, fundamental liberties are shredded like Watergate files, and America-hating propaganda is trendy and hip.  Americans may soon find themselves irrevocably embarking on a 21st-century holiday in U.S. Cambodia, with globalist guns at their backs, complying with the social credit police and staving off starvation with synthetic meats and cockroach burgers...

...to rescue the planet from climate change, white patriarchy, Christian nationalism, and capitalism.

Don’t forget to pack a (transgender?) wife.

(Previously published at American Thinker.)