Gen Z may be horrifying, but it’s the Baby Boomers who are failing us.
Gen Z may be horrifying, but it’s the Baby Boomers who are failing us.
‘T he older I grow,” wrote H. L. Mencken in 1922, “the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”
The past few years have shown us that there was . . . wisdom in Mencken’s observation, as we witness an inversion of the idea that seniors are our greatest knowledge resource. It may no longer be a good idea to respect our elders.
The most obvious examples of this phenomenon come from our long-toothed presidential candidates, who dispense ignorance on a daily basis. Each of them — Joe Biden at 81, Donald Trump at 77, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at 70 (and why not throw in Cornel West, 70, and Jill Stein, 73) — displays a juvenile grasp of truth and reason.
Trump, of course, cannot see any event in the world without placing himself directly in the middle of it. What is adolescence other than the inability to see the world outside yourself and properly place yourself in context? When slapped with an order telling him he can’t try to intimidate witnesses in his own trials, he declares he will be the “Modern Day Nelson Mandela.” When Easter arrives, he muses that he, too, must be like Christ, given the unfair persecution he has faced. (Who can forget the time Jesus sold gold basketball shoes to avoid crucifixion?)
Just this week, Trump urged House Republicans to block a reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), not out of any high-minded concern for the monitoring of Americans but out of his trademark solipsism: “IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!” Trump raged on Truth Social.
Thus does Trump blaze his way through American politics, lacking both discretion and knowledge of, or interest in, matters larger than himself.
But none of this would work if Trump didn’t have his enablers. The record is clear: Trump throws a two-month tantrum and thousands of people attack the U.S. Capitol on his behalf. Trump is credibly charged with breaking the law, and gray-haired senators who should know better capitulate to his dishonest bleatings.
In fact, Trump’s fan base is aging: In 2016, around 25 percent of Trump supporters were 65 or older, while in 2024, it has increased to around 36 percent. Many of these older Republican voters spent their adult lives believing it was important to reduce government regulation, strengthen the rule of law, instill “family values,” and promote free trade. And yet many of them have forsaken those principles to back a thrice-married, vulgar man who urged his vice president to violate the Constitution, can’t find a bad word to say about the world’s worst dictators, and wants to slap a 10 percent tariff on foreign goods. The more our elders see of Trump, the more they like him.
Preying on the elderly is despicable, and we often prosecute those who do — scamming seniors by selling them worthless mortgage plans will land you in jail. Scamming seniors by telling them you actually won a presidential campaign that you lost will get you your party’s nomination four years later.
According to a July 2023 CNN poll, in fact, voters over 65 were the most likely age group to say Joe Biden didn’t win the presidency legitimately in 2020 and that there was “solid evidence” to prove that he was an illegitimate president.
But the Democratic Party is saddled with its own Boomer problems. In fact, the misdeeds of the geriatric politicians on the left are perhaps even worse. Joe Biden spent nearly four decades in the U.S. Senate as a Democrat who appealed to the working class but has now sacrificed his principles to the predilections of the Wellesley College faculty lounge.
Once ostensibly pro-life, Biden now crows about his plans to make unlimited abortion the law of the land. Just a few years ago, he properly recognized the government’s limited role in “forgiving” student debt; now, faced with students dyspeptic over his Gaza policy, he is blowing right by an unfavorable Supreme Court ruling — even bragging that he won’t let it stop him — and promising to “cancel” debt taken out by students who accepted it under the condition they would have to pay it back.
Throw that on the pile of misinformation being pumped to young people by Senators Elizabeth Warren (74) and Bernie Sanders (82), whose economic musings continue to sully Gen-Z minds. For instance, Warren’s fact-free crusade against “greedflation” is so economically illiterate it wouldn’t pass muster in a freshman economics class; and yet people in their 20s, still apparently believing in the wisdom of the elders, lap it up as gospel. Sanders’s bromides against capitalism demonstrate a mind that has learned virtually nothing during its long sojourn on this earth (while still earning Sanders at least three homes).
And then the less said the better about nepo-kook RFK Jr., whose vaccine skepticism — long before the Covid era, it’s important to understand — may well have harmed some of the voters he needs the most: those old enough to remember the family whose name he bears. (Kennedy perhaps takes science lessons from 74-year-old congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who this week let everyone in on the secret that the moon is a “planet” made up “mostly of gases.”)
And then, of course, there are the elders most responsible for shaping young minds, the university presidents, administrators, and some faculty who continually cave to students who make preposterous demands. This is the first generation of students to attend college because of what they think they can teach their professors. It would be tempting to call it a “day care for young adults,” but any actual day care would be shut down if the grown-ups cowered behind desks while the toddlers ran the place.
Of course, not all seniors have turned to the dark side. Many men and women over 65 are appalled at the portion of their age cohort that has descended into conspiracy-world. In fact, while the world frets over the use of social media by young people, it is actually an intense minority of seniors who fire off misinformation at a rate that puts Zoomers to shame.
Sure, Gen-Zers are annoying with their affinity for socialism, their nonsensical assertions about gender, their cheering on of terrorists, and their never-ending quest for “rizz.” But they are reaching adulthood at a time when the reigning gerontocracy demonstrates a disrespect for truth and, often, outright aggression against decency. As Ronald Reagan once said of liberals, the trouble with some Baby Boomers is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.
The great philosopher Grandpa Simpson once said, “The good Lord lets us grow old for a reason. To gain the wisdom to find fault with everything He’s made.”
But it may be time for some of those who have grown old to acknowledge the fault in themselves.