The Kids Are Alright, It’s the Boomers Who Are Bananas
In the wake of the 2020 election, my friends who are Trump voters were distraught. These folks range from early Gen X to early-to-mid Boomers. Worried that the world was ending, they decided to ask me, their “professional” political friend, what they could do. My advice was twofold: First, turn off the TV. The 24/7 news stations have one purpose — to wind up and propagandize people. Turn it off. The second piece of advice: Y’all are retired. Start running for local political office or make the trek to Austin and lobby for your positions. You have time and money. Do something! Oh, and for good measure, I recommended going back to church. Setting one’s sights above tends to help the below make more sense. It doesn’t work the other way around.
Many of these folks did turn off the TV and reclaim their sanity. They switched to long-form podcasts. They became more informed and less hysterical.
Now. In this election, one group of voters surprised everyone: Boomers. Aren’t people supposed to get more conservative as they age? Not this group. I have a couple theories as to why this might be. Before the election, I warned about two groups of people who are less conservative than they should be and could cost Trump the election. One was white millennial men. The other was Boomer women. It’s the Boomers who capture my curiosity. Why would they vote more liberal than Gen X — the only cohort that voted in the majority for Trump?
My theory is that Boomers, when not sitting on their piles of money made in the stock market, watch cable news shows constantly. They’re the only group that still consistently does this, and they’re the only group brainwashed ideologically based on the stations they watch. No matter whether they are FOX, CNN, or MSNBC addicts, they’re radical, balls of impotent rage sitting in recliners with computers on their laps, sending missives to their friends and family.
How many gray-haired ladies have you seen screaming at the store or on the street corner? I just saw one such video where a liberal, silver-haired crazy got into the face of a young black woman for voting for Trump. “Don’t you know they’re racist?!” She was arrested for pushing the Trump voter in the face. “You can’t put your hands on someone,” the female cop can be heard saying off-camera. What the hell? What is wrong with people?
Propaganda.
This lady likely counts Rachel Maddow as a friend. People who watched CNN and MSNBC constantly and then The View in the mornings heard daily diatribes against Nazis (key words for Boomers who grew up with WWII veterans for parents) and heard nothing of Kamala Harris’ ignominious rise to power or Joe Biden’s mental decline. They never heard about topics radicalizing other generations like transgendering children or the DEI madness in corporations and on college campuses.
Boomers missed out on so many of these phenomenon. They can pretend that elementary students aren’t being fed porn books. They can ignore the problem of boys in girls’ locker rooms or boys taking the place of girls winning in sports. They don’t know about Drag Queen Story Hour, and if they hear about it, they believe that it’s an exaggerated thing. They’re retired and so avoided the DEI madness. They didn’t have the threat of speech codes and the race training programs consuming corporate HR departments.
Their wealth and paid-for homes insulate them from the problems of inflation and illegal immigration. They’re living in protected enclaves. All of the problems Trump elucidated are overstated, you see. Where is the compassion?
Meanwhile, they are fed a stream of lies portraying their fellow men as villains. Right-wing “extremism” is believable for the “give peace a chance” generation. They voted Democrat because they were lovers. They wore daisies in their hair and bell bottoms on their legs. They were “beneficiaries” of abortion and The Pill and no-fault divorce. They hung their identity on social change and Jane Fonda’s fist and flower power. They believe their political enemies are racist, sexist homophobes. Some believed that to be feminist meant never having children, and so they didn’t. Meanwhile, they’re the enlightened, tolerant, good ones. The world has changed around them, but they consume media that confirm beliefs that are 50 years old.
My mom has neighbors who sit in their recliners watching MSNBC all day and couldn’t believe that Kamala lost. At the mailbox during a bland conversation, they professed to having never heard how Kamala Harris came to power. They knew nothing of Willie Brown. They claimed ignorance of all sorts of issues. How could this be?
Well, they probably never have heard these stories. Ronald Reagan said this of liberals two generations ago, “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” That truism is as accurate today as it was when Reagan said it. The media’s hold on the Boomer generation has them knowing so much that isn’t so. Let’s hope that the destruction of the media in the wake of this election brings a crack of light into the minds of these folks. Maybe then they can see.
Or maybe the more than half of this generation that voted for Democrat insanity will go to the grave thinking thoughts that just aren’t so.
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