Gen X to Trump: let's roll
The famously forgotten generation remembered where it came from
Until about a week ago, Gen X was a bit of a forgotten generation.
Gen X were famously feral: squeezed between the arch-narcissist Boomers and the spoiled offspring of their second marriages — the Millennials. We were cynical, because we came after the hippy years and the big money Wall Street years, missing out on both. We were battle-tested. From our parents’ divorces, from not wearing bike helmets, and from getting blackout drunk in fields and tripping balls in city parks. We tell stories from our childhoods and teen years that make us laugh deep belly laughs, then we notice our Gen Z interlocutors staring at us, aghast. We have always been — to bring back a word that has fallen out of use — kind of gnarly.
When Trump picked JD Vance, a Millennial, to be his vice-presidential running mate, I inwardly sighed. I was heartened to see a younger generation getting a chance to replace the gerontocracy, but felt a tad slighted on behalf of my fellow Gen X’ers.
But turns out, I didn’t have to worry. Because the feat of re-electing Donald J. Trump to a second term, after everything the Swamp threw at him, was largely down to Gen X.
First off, we delivered bigly at the polls.
“What’s with Gen X women and Trump?” Monica Hesse at the Washington Post asked, reporting that only 41 percent of us voted for Kamala Harris, and 54 percent went for Trump.
I can tell you what it is with us, Monica. We are kind of mean. Our favourite term of endearment for close female friends is ‘ho’ and ‘bitch’ — sometimes ‘slut.’ Ok — maybe that’s just me, but hurty words are not a thing for us. We refuse to stop saying ‘retard.’ We still smoke. Our anti-bullying programme consisted of being told by an adult to punch the bully in the face.
The iconic films of our childhood frequently featured scary government agents trying to take away things we loved (ET, Firestarter); or revolved around totally lame and vindictive school bureaucrats getting their comeuppance from cool rule-breakers (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the Breakfast Club).
Here’s the evil government coming to take away our alien bestie, even if it means they kill him in the process:
And here’s the evil government shooting adorable pyro Drew Barrymore, for the crime of being born different.
And suddenly people are shocked that we voted for Trump?
When you think about it, our whole vibe is independence, scorn, mistrust of authority. Why would we vote for Devouring Mommy Government? We’ll take our chances with the roller coaster of chaos that was the Trump campaign, because it reminds of our unstable childhoods. And because we are fucking done with the woke scolds — entitled brats who never had to fight their own corner — telling us what to do.
Since my early twenties, I’ve yearned for a real change agent to come along and implement some policy fixes that were not obvious power grabs for corporate America. Time after time, Democrats failed to produce that change agent. (Remember Howard Dean, anyone? Yeah, I supported him.)
Trump, Series One also failed to be that change agent. However, Trump Series Two is looking like a whole different story. And who are his most influential allies? Gen X’ers like Elon Musk (b.1971), Megyn Kelly (b.1970), Joe Rogan (b. 1967), Dana White (b. 1969), and Tulsi Gabbard (who’s a Millennial only by a few months, so we’ll claim her.)
Last week I came across a video of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee playing heavy metal with Korn’s Brian Welch (b. 1970). The video was from 2019, but was being shared again because Huckabee was just nominated to be Trump’s ambassador to Israel. There was something about him shredding on his bass guitar that awoke the 1993 version of me — the kid who would rock out to Guns N Roses in the nightclub I had illegally entered with my fake ID as an underage drinker.
And that’s when it came to me: this whole Trump moment is a Gen X fever dream come true. It’s a band of outcasts and misfits, tough men and straight-talking women. Rogues and rakes, maybe. But we’ll take that over prissy nagging and hypocrisy any day. We were raised on Han Solo and Chewbacca. We can be morally flexible for a cause that’s good and true.
Obviously, we lost many Gen X’ers to Trump Derangement Syndrome and woke ideology. Plenty of Gen X moms turned into Transhausen monsters and had their sons castrated and their girls’ breasts cut off. We must own up to this. But until last week I thought that was the majority of my generation.
I’m delighted to report that I was wrong.
I am absolutely loving the comments today. You guys are hilarious.
Ok, so seriously, when it became clear that Orange Man Bad was in fact gonna take it, and take it hard, I laughed out loud and said, “Gen X finally had enough.” And then had to contemplate whether that makes us The Silent Majority of our era. (Does it?🤔😵💫) Fuck, yeah, it does.
We were silent for too long because we can’t be bothered to give a fuck because we know it is a corrupt as shit system. We were too busy defiantly going our own ways as usual cause nobody can be bothered to pay attention to us or our wellbeing for even two seconds in a row. Then we watched as things literally went INSANE. And finally said, We’re not gonna take it!/No/We’re not gonna take it/ANYMORE!
I wonder too if any generation has been positioned as X is. I have known intimately Americans who were born in the Victorian and the Digital Age. And we are the pivot generation. We were the first ones in the new world.
It hadn’t even occurred to anyone that if mom went off to work you might wanna have somebody check on the kids. We were tossed into adolescence post Sexual Revolution, smack dab into the middle of AIDS, and noone had thought to install some brakes on that car yet. The revolting date rape party that got Kavanaugh in hot water? That was Friday night nationwide, baby. They had cut us loose from waiting till you are married and in no way prepared us for
safety in the ensuing fuckfest. (Why did they have to beg us to wear condoms?! Think about it! 🤦♀️Why weren’t we wearing them? Cause they wouldn’t let us buy them. Holy fuck.)
And while we were off being our badass selves, we watched while the corporations took over the globe, commodified the counterculture, and then decided that wasn’t enough. No, whoever is behind the past few years of global chaos needs to not just demand obedience but take us over down to our very thoughts.
We paid attention enough back when they still had civics at school to know totalitarianism when we see it. And we’re archaic enough to think totalitarianism is not good. The spirit of individual liberty that built this nation, good and bad, and fueled our utterly unsupervised youths was not something we were willing to surrender.
So we said Back the fuck up. We got off of our defiant asses and voted. And the scary part is when today’s kids grow up and take over, they will have grown up with every single thing controlled and decided for them. And we are literally rewiring their little brains with technology, stifling their very breath with masks, and letting them scamper unattended through the deep woods of the internet, which is populated with wolves of a darkness we could never imagine. So who is the untended generation now? They look coddled and protected while we literally sacrifice them on the altars of our whims of free internet access, gender dysphoria, and untrammeled consumer capitalism.
Here’s the thing. Those of us who survived, did so with no car seats, no bike helmets, no safe spaces, no intervention no matter if we got beat or bullied or raped. And here we are, basically functional adults. And we got to the point of telling the whiners to shut the fuck up. And the mind control fucks to fuck off. But are we fiercely guarding our offspring, like the feral creatures we are? Do we rip out the metaphorical throat of those who lie to and damage our kids with casual glee and elitist disdain, so certain they know what is best for everyone else?
Okay. Thanks for the fantastic column. And for the space to rant as GenXish as I wish