Conspirituality - Bonus Sample: How Did Gen X Go MAGA?
Aired: 2025-05-05
Duration: 06:15


=== Gen X's Turn Toward Trump (06:12) ===

[00:00:03]  In the 2016 presidential election, Gen X cast 35.7 million votes, which was the highest turnout for our age demographic up to that point.
[00:00:14]  In 2020, it was 36 million votes.
[00:00:17]  And then in 2024, estimates say up to 44 million of us voted.
[00:00:22]  And with each election, Gen X has been getting more conservative, or, as many headlines have stated, Trumpier.
[00:00:32]  I want to meditate on what happened to my generation today.
[00:00:36]  Let's start by looking at some data.
[00:00:39]  Gen X was already showing signs of being less democratic than millennials in 2016.
[00:00:46]  Back then, 49% of Gen X voters leaned democratic compared to 55% of millennials.
[00:00:54]  Exit polls at the time indicate that we were more evenly split than boomers or millennials, but leaned slightly right of center.
[00:01:03]  And then we get to 2020, and even though Biden won, Gen X edged further right, voting for Trump by a one-point margin.
[00:01:12]  Millennials and Gen Z were more evenly split at that time.
[00:01:17]  Then came 2024.
[00:01:20]  Gen X favored Trump by a 6 to 9 point margin, and that made us his strongest generational base.
[00:01:29]  Millennials and boomers moved less dramatically, and boomers trended slightly more democratic in the last election cycle than they had previously.
[00:01:38]  Some reporting on Gen Xers found that we feel financially insecure, and that was the reason for this shift.
[00:01:47]  Data do back this up, given that we're unlikely to earn more than our parents did, but in my opinion, it doesn't really explain my generation's turn towards Trump, a man who is not going to help out anyone who's not a billionaire, or has the Trump name.
[00:02:05]  While reviewing materials for this episode, I've read that Trump's brash style, his irreverence, his use of irony appealed to Gen X sensibilities.
[00:02:15]  His controversial statements were apparently less off-putting compared to other generations.
[00:02:21]  I mean, maybe?
[00:02:23]  A lot of that has to do with geography.
[00:02:25]  I grew up in Jersey in the 80s.
[00:02:27]  We all knew that Trump was a hack, especially after what he did to Atlantic City.
[00:02:33]  There's a certain type of person that you quickly knew not to trust, and Trump embodies that person perfectly.
[00:02:41]  He's like a caricature of that person.
[00:02:45]  But I also recognize how power and money are so seductive, so it makes sense that he'd have lackeys around, just not as many as I thought he would.
[00:02:58]  There are a few other explanations that I'll entertain during this episode.
[00:03:02]  I think the cynicism angle holds some weight, but not all of it.
[00:03:06]  We are the latchkey generation, that is true.
[00:03:09]  I started walking to school by myself in first grade.
[00:03:13]  It was about a half a mile away.
[00:03:16]  Parents just set me off and I walked home.
[00:03:18]  I mean, there would be entire days I wouldn't see my parents.
[00:03:22]  They didn't ask me where I was, and I didn't tell them.
[00:03:25]  I didn't speak to them much at all, and that's not unusual among at least my anecdotal cohort of people who I grew up with.
[00:03:33]  Perhaps now I am a little bit more unusual in that I'm really close with my parents and so many of my friends aren't.
[00:03:41]  But regardless, I get this impulse to assign our independent upbringings with Trump's selfish policies and his ego, but I don't think that's it either.
[00:03:51]  And of course, we have to talk about the music and the movies because that is so definitional of Gen X. We had a very specific genre of both, but all generations do.
[00:04:03]  In the 80s, we had the good guy always win, John Cusack, Hero's Journey ethos, which I remember fondly.
[00:04:12]  But I also realized how ill-prepared that made me for reality because of that sort of good guy is always going to win mentality.
[00:04:22]  To be honest, the whiteness of it all fit quite well into the Reaganomics dynamic America was enduring at that time.
[00:04:30]  I will say, though, I'm happy to report that unlike a number of my childhood heroes, John Cusack is a prolific anti-MAGA voice on social media, so that makes me happy.
[00:04:40]  And the music, of course, was all about the rage.
[00:04:43]  And I know music isn't life, but it does reflect life and the time and the culture that breeds it.
[00:04:50]  The most common comparison that you'll see in media is that Gen X once raged against the machine and now they put Trump in power.
[00:04:58]  I have some personal weight in that.
[00:05:00]  I mean, rage against the machine was extremely influential.
[00:05:05]  In 1993, I got to hang out with Tom Morello when I was a freshman in college just for an evening, but it was really informative and incredible.
[00:05:15]  And then a couple years later, I wrote a cover story for a magazine about Rage Against the Machine and talked to Tom and caught up with him then.
[00:05:22]  And thankfully, he is definitely still the anti-Trump.
[00:05:26]  I understand the idea that the entire generation was raging, but as we're going to get into, it didn't represent All of my peers.
[00:05:37]  And that's really important to point out.
[00:05:40]  So, I'm Derek Barris.
[00:05:42]  You're listening to a Conspirituality Bonus Episode.
[00:05:45]  How did Gen X go MAGA?
[00:05:47]  Let's get into it.
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