In this latest election, Mackenzie notes, one voting group took everyone by surprise: Boomers. Conventional wisdom says people tend to grow more conservative with age, but that doesn't seem to hold for this crowd, as many voted for Kamala Harris.
Mackenzie's theory? Boomers, when not checking their stock portfolios, are glued to cable news - a near-exclusive habit to their generation. It’s become a kind of ideological brainwashing factory, whether they're tuning into FOX, CNN, or MSNBC. The result is a generation of radicalized, opinionated warriors-on-recliners with laptops, firing off loaded messages to family and friends.
She asks: How often have you seen viral videos of gray-haired folks caught in public rants? Just recently, I saw one where a silver-haired woman berated a young Black woman for voting for Trump, yelling, “Don’t you know they’re racist?!” After shoving the younger woman, she was promptly cuffed by the police. “You can’t put your hands on someone,” the officer tells her off-camera. What is going on here?
It’s the grip of media-fueled propaganda. This woman, most likely a Rachel Maddow superfan, might spend her mornings with The View and her evenings with MSNBC, soaking up the same drumbeat. They hear about Nazis and “the evil right” daily, but they’re never exposed to discussions on Biden’s health, Harris’ rise through the political ranks, or social issues that resonate with younger generations - things like gender debates, corporate DEI programs, and free speech concerns.
Boomers, Mackenzie reflects, live apart from these culture shifts. They’re not seeing the same worries because they’re insulated. Their paid-off homes and stable wealth mean inflation or immigration worries don’t touch them the same way. They can live in denial of stories like Drag Queen Story Hours or ignore issues about transgender athletes in schools. They missed the whole storm of HR’s “race training” and corporate speech codes because they’re retired. These things just seem exaggerated to them.
For Boomers, Mackenzie explains, things are as they’ve always been. They grew up believing in social change, free love, and civil rights. They were the generation of bell-bottoms, Woodstock, and anti-war protests. They wore flowers in their hair, they believed in feminism and “giving peace a chance.” Now, they hold on to a self-image of tolerance and enlightenment - even while the media they consume paints their political opponents as hateful racists and “extremists.” The world has shifted around them, but they’re stuck in a media bubble that only confirms beliefs they’ve held for half a century.
As Ronald Reagan said, “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” Today, this rings truer than ever for Boomers who, day after day, consume media narratives with few chances to encounter an opposing view.
* This opinion piece appears in the American Spectator.