Episode Transcript
Col him called gen X elected Donald Trump, and I
got to tell you, for the generation that's been ignored
since our very birth, we are finally having our moment
in the sun where we as a generation decided to
look at the candidates and go, no, that one looks
like a bigger middle finger to us. And so gen
X pushes Trump over the finish line. And David Strom
(00:23):
wrote about it today, David, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Well, thank you, Mandy. It's always fun to be with you.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
And I have to admit I wish I wear gen X,
but I just miss it. Well.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
You know, you and my husband were both born in
nineteen sixty four, which is technically the last year of
the boomers. But he is far more gen X than
he ever was boomer. So I just say he's a
Boomer on the cusp, right, So like in astrology, when
you're right on the edge, you're just your gen X
on the cusp is what you are. So I'll give
you that title.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Yeah, Well, I am what a friend of mine calls
a member of a silent generation, because we don't quite
fit into either category. You know, I watched the Vietnam
War on TV as a kid, but by the time
I became an adult, it was in the rear view mirror.
(01:20):
And you know, I wasn't old enough to vote for
Ronald Reagan at least the first time, but I was
too old to really say I grew up in the
Reagan era, which is what the gen X people did.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
And we did.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
And so I'd love to know you've got this great column.
Justine Bateman created a firestorm, a firestorm with a simple
tweet that just expressed what so many other people have felt.
And that is just like we can all exhale because
finally sanity is beginning to prevail and all of a sudden,
(01:59):
Justin Batement is everywhere.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Well and rightly.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
So she really has been in a very gen X way,
even though she is basically my age, but in a
very gen X way looking at what has happened and
identified something really great, which is gen x through its
(02:26):
cynicism in a way, it's lack of being overly idealistic
and it's lack of being you know, oversensitive. Looked at
what was going on and said, look, this is nuts.
It's ruining our lives. I don't care if Donald Trump
is crude or anything else. I want my life to
(02:47):
be better, and so they voted for him in much
larger numbers than any other demographic group.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I think that for myself, and I've been doing a
deep dive on gen X for a lot of different
reasons that I'll share with you guys later, But one
of the things that I feel is that we tend
to look at any situation in a very pragmatic way,
because when you don't have a lot of guidance from
(03:15):
your parents, and many of us in this generation raised
ourselves to a certain extent, you have to figure that
out at an early age. You just have to say, look,
you know what is let's take the emotion out of it.
What's going to be the best for me going forward
and economically, just common sense wise. And one of the
things Justine Bateman goes on about is that is how
intolerable our society has gotten. Intolerable and intolerant our society
(03:40):
has gotten and she just wants to go back to
the days when people could have a political disagreement and
still be friends. Which you say that and you think,
of course that's how it should be, but not everybody
sees it that way. So in your view, what is
going forward?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
You know, I think it even goes beyond politics.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
It's just that we've been living through a totalitarian moment,
almost a maoist moment, where there was a cultural revolution
out there, and if you did not conform, not just politically,
but in any number of culture war issues, you were
persona on grata.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
I mean, they're they're really developed a cult out there.
You know, whether you call it woke or alphabet.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Ideology or whatever, it also boiled down to you had
to comply or else. And you know, the gen X,
you know generation came up at a time where people
realized that, you know, they couldn't count on the government.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Not everything was a great moral crusade.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
I mean they looked at the boomers, you know, who
are so proud of themselves for protesting.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
The Vietnam War and you.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Know, patted themselves on the back for it, and you know,
the gen X people looked at them and said, yeah,
well you quit doing that as soon as the draft
went away. You know, it was not anything about you know,
great moral crusades. And you know, we're just tired of
hearing all this moralistic bs. You know, we can account
(05:28):
on the government to give us social security or anything. Else.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
So we're going to make our own world and not.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
As that's been sort of the trail that we've blazed
quite nicely. I just started kind of interesting that that
the swing from left to right was double digits by
a long shot for this group of people. And I
think that part of it is, First of all, I'm
I am five years into gen X, so I'm fifty
(05:54):
five years old. I'm looking at my retirement. I'm looking
at my you know, what's going to be either in
my in my four to one k and in my
investment accounts, or what's real estate going to do? Because
I'm now looking very closely at the time of life
when I want to be able to retire. So when
I'm choosing my candidate, I'm going to look at the
candidate whose policies are going to facilitate that. And I
(06:16):
think a lot of that happened in this election. You
have you know, Kamala Harris running around talking about giving
loans to only black men and all of this insane
stuff that we all knew wouldn't do anything to solve
any problem, and.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
We just went, no, we're not going to do that.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
We just want some some kind of certainty with business
and and you know, taxes and lower regulation. We just
want everything to work, and it's not working now.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Well, and you know, if you think about it, Boomers really,
you know, they look at wokesoff and in a very
abstract way, understand that it's stupid. But it's jen X
who's at the sort of at the top of their
game right now, their prime earning years. And what they're
(07:03):
seeing is they're being labeled people who have worked their
butts off. They're being labeled as the oppressors. They're being
asked to, you know, pay the loans of gender studies,
people who you know, have contributed next to nothing or
worse to our society.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And you know, they I don't want to say that Gen.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
X resented it, because I don't think that Gener X
is a particularly resentful generation. They were just tired of
the BS.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
That's an excellent point, really excellent point. My guest is
David Strong. You can read his column at hot air
dot column. I've linked to the one about gen X
that we're talking about right now, and you can see
the shift in gen X dramatic in some of the
stuff that he has embedded in here. David a great
column and I appreciate you making time for me today
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Always,
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