Trail Talk: A Primer on Boomercons

The Catskill Mountains and the Trail Talk Setup

Hey everyone, welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, trail talk edition. Behind me, if you're watching, you can see are the Catskill Mountains. This is one of the two big mountain ranges in New York.

They're not very tall. The tallest are probably about 4 ,000 feet and we're at 3 ,700 feet looking down. But they are just gorgeous. And I know many of you, you hear New York, you think skyscrapers, you think traffic, you think liberals.

It's not like that in the whole entire state. And this is actually not all that far from where I live. So I try, if I can, once a week to come up here and take a hike, do a bike ride, something. And it doesn't happen many weeks, but this week it happened and it's a beautiful day.

And so anyway, I'm glad I can share that with some of you in the audience. So you can see how beautiful this is. The topic for today's trail talk isn't really related to the scenery and it's not related to a lot of what we talk about.

Maybe it's somewhat related, but it's more of an interest to me because I find it, I guess, fascinating for some odd reason. I don't know if I'm weird for that. I think though the usefulness is going to be dispelling confusion for many of you.

And the confusion that I'm talking about is concerning the term boomer con or boomer conservatism. Some of you have heard that term and I would suspect that some of you know what it means and some of you don't.

What I found out though, when I looked this up a while ago, is that not many definitions, there really aren't any definitions. There's not many interpretive, helpful interpretive guides out there to explain this because I think it's like a lot of terms today that have their origin in memes and internet conversation.

These terms sometimes are very short-lived. Sometimes they'll but they come out of nowhere and then they catch on really quick. I mean if you're part of a like a meme group or a chat group and it's a large one and someone comes up with a new term and it becomes popular, it only takes a day and that term's everywhere and it's trending.

So boomer con is one of those terms that I think kind of came out of nowhere and that's why people who aren't initiated into this don't really understand it. And I was one of those people because I think I first heard it a few years ago and my initial assumption was, well this is just the extension of the phrase okay boomer.

If some of you remember that, that was a few years ago, probably I want to say 2016, 17, 18. You heard it more when I was someone who was older would bring up a conservative opinion, a younger leftist would respond okay boomer.

And this got picked up in not just political conversation but any opinion from an older person could be dismissed with just the wave of okay boomer. And that's of course ridiculous. Just because someone's older doesn't mean that their opinions are less valid.

In fact they probably are more likely to have wisdom, at least they should be. There's a lot of old fools out there but you would think if the experiences that they've had have taught them anything they would have more to say.

That's useful right? So anyway when I first heard boomer con I thought well this is just silly. This is dismissing people because they're older and their opinions are somehow less valid. I've come to realize that that's not exactly what this is.

Conventional Politics, Trust in Institutions, and the Boomer Conservative Mindset

I think they're probably pretty separate and this is more coming from the right. It's coming from younger people primarily but it's not just younger people. Something very specific is meant by it. The only way that age factors into this is because there is a particular deviant.

There's an anomaly. There's something different about post-World War II conservatism than conservatism before that. And I think where conservatism probably, and I'm talking about political conservatism in the United States especially, is probably heading.

So to explain the deviation the term boomer con is now used. Now before boomer con I think neocon was, and it still is, was used more. And I think they are closely related but I think they are slightly different.

So this is my attempt to give you a very comprehensive, as much as I can, understanding of boomer conservatism, what is meant by it when the term is used. Because again there's just not much out there to explain this.

The most helpful thing is there's a Michael Malice interview with the Babylon Bee and they spend maybe, I don't know, a few minutes, three minutes or so talking about this. And it's just assumed that everyone kind of knows.

But not everyone does. So here's my take on boomer conservatism and what it is. The boomer cons are viewed as very conventional by especially younger conservatives and even paleo-conservatives. I would consider myself in that vein more of a paleo-conservative.

They're very conventional. They like what's good for the market. They like what's good for business. They tend to think in those terms more and they don't want to do things that would threaten business too much.

Sacrifices, great sacrifices that maybe should be made to preserve our society, our way of life, those aren't options as much for boomer cons. So they're very conventional and they don't think outside the box as much.

I'll give you an example, like elections, right? So they would work through the election process even if it's clear that the elections in certain areas might be compromised. We can't face the music on that.

We can't think outside the box and try to come up with creative solutions or other ways of influencing or promoting our principles. So we have to work through the conventional ways and not just elections but the ways that elections have traditionally been done.

In some ways, although Trump is in some ways a boomer con, he actually was somewhat unconventional and I think attracted a lot of people who were more paleo-con, dissident-right, folks who were not conventional.

So anyway, that's one of the things and there's probably other facets to that but being conventional, trusting the system, trusting the FBI and the CIA and all of that, that's part of boomer conservatism.

So they're not as as the young people, well not just young, it's everyone now, as most people on the right say, they're not red-pilled. They tend to be very cushioned as well. I think I already kind of touched on that but they really enjoy their financial prosperity and that generation especially has a lot of financial prosperity.

They were entering the job market when the economy was very good. They secured really good jobs with really good retirements. They have expectations on how they want to spend the time that they have in retirement and often it's not as much about building the next generation up as much as it is and I'm saying compared to other generations.

I'm not saying all boomers are like this. Please don't misunderstand. I love, my parents are boomers so don't, there's no hatred or disdain I have for people who are boomers. I'm just saying there's a general trend here that they tend to think about how they can use their money for themselves and their own dreams and there's a lot of, I'll just say it, self-centeredness and the Gen Zers I would say are, I mean they're way more self-centered than the boomers as far as viewing everything through the lens of how it affects them and the trauma they have which sometimes is somewhat ridiculous but the boomers really were the generation that started this more child-centered approach to parenting and you could say the greatest generation I guess maybe got that started before them but the boomers were significant in really starting this idea of self-expression and personal freedom being so important in the sense of having no limitations upon your desires, being able to do whatever you want to do and even if that's forsaking responsibilities to some extent.

So I don't have the stats in front of me but if you look at the boomer generation as compared with the greatest generation, you can see where the divorce rates start to spike, right? And so anyway, being cushioned, voting that way, having a political philosophy that maintains that particular lifestyle is very important.

They're very nationalistic in the sense that they, and I don't mean like Christian nationalism today, I mean like in the sense that they really love things like the Pledge of Allegiance, right? One nation, under God, indivisible, you can't divide the nation up.

I mean you start talking about nullification or secession, right? Again, unconventional approaches that were used in the past and are very American. You can't even get a lot of boomer conservatives to entertain those ideas.

And this is where I think you start figuring out it's not just about the generation, the boomer generation. Boomer conservatism is about so much more than that. It's about a philosophy that developed in that post-World War II time period.

So there's people who aren't boomers, there's millennials like myself, there's even Gen Zers who have this mentality, but there's something almost spiritual about the nation in their minds. And it's got to be 50 states and they have to stay together and you can't break it up.

And it's like something that they, it's just like, I don't even know how to describe it. You see it more than you, or feel it and see it more than you can describe it. A good example is when I was at the airport with my wife recently and we were entering the United States from Mexico.

I almost fell. I'm going to stay right here. We were entering the United States from Mexico and we were at the airport in Fort Lauderdale. And when you come in, there's this video that they play. Some of you might've seen it.

That's basically a welcome to the United States video. And in that video, there's soaring eagles and beautiful national parks and all kinds of people in New York city. And there's cowboys and just all kinds of different people.

And it's this inspirational United States kind of Lee Greenwood, 1980s-ish message. And this is standard for boomer conservatives. They view the nation this way, that it's chosen by God. They might not say it that way, but there's something very special about it.

But that specialness goes away when you start thinking about individual regions. It's only as a whole that it's special. So there's a contribution that each region makes and each culture makes to this idea of America or this way of life in America, freedom, liberty.

So it's very broad and it's not what I think a lot of younger conservatives are interested in as much because they know that a lot of that is a farce. It's not something that is going to be maintained.

It's really even not being maintained at this point, but it won't be maintained for much longer. And let's face it. Some regions are very different. If you go to Auburn, Alabama, it's going to be a lot different than going to Portland, Oregon.

And so different that you wonder how these two places can be in the same country and be governed by the same president and the same Congress. And as those divisions become more and more stark, the glue that kept United States together during the Cold War era, which is when boomer conservatism was really being shaped, that is all falling apart.

And I would suggest that in some ways that was somewhat artificial. That was a unique time and it was a temporary state of affairs, not something that is natural or something that would happen long-term with the scale that we have in the United States.

It's just so big, so many diverse and different kinds of people. You can't really hold it together based on something as broad and vague as freedom. So that's another key aspect to this nationalistic kind of fervor beyond above localist tendencies, which I think the younger conservatives are, they tend to be a little more localist.

There's a superficiality to it as well. Again, that's what I saw in that video of Welcome to America. Here's what we're about. Not that I would recommend anyone going to Disneyland anymore, but years ago I went to Epcot.

And if any of you've been to Epcot, if you go to France, France is one of the nations that's featured at Epcot. They have this video and here's what France is about. And that video to me is so different representing France than most of the depictions of the United States.

And the thing that's different about it is this, in France, there's a, in the France video at Epcot, it's focusing on landmarks, historical landmarks, Versailles, the churches, old churches, and all of that.

And it focuses on the landscape, it focuses on the people, but there's not this cheesiness to it. It's very organic. When I look at the depictions, like I saw in the airport of this is what the United States is about, it has to show like a lot of people, like smiling people with American flags and bald eagles in the background.

And there's something kind of artificial about it. And that's somewhat superficial. We know that that's not really real life. That might be like a snapshot of life, but it's not like every single group of people anywhere in America is just smiling all the time because they're just so proud to be American.

And with symbols of patriotism all over the place. So there is something true about that, like we are proud to be Americans. I think for me, being a millennial, I'm kind of in between Gen Z and Boomer, and I kind of understand from both angles on this.

My heart swells at a patriotic parade, right? But I also realize that it's kind of ridiculous to pretend that the country that we once were, we still are, or that there's some kind of glue that can keep us together and make us proud to be Americans and motivate us to go to war and put confidence in our government.

The confidence is gone. The wanting to defend the country as a whole is, I think, slipping. And the defense people want to make is of their specific families, their regions, and their unique way of life.

And it's too broad to say that that's all American. So anyway, and France is, of course, it's a large country, but it's also smaller than this. The scale is smaller than the United States, and it's less diverse.

And so I think that also probably contributes to why I just saw such a difference. It just stood out to me. Probably more could be said, but I want to finish up, and there's only a few more categories.

They accept the post-World War II consensus, Boomer conservatives. This might be the most significant aspect of being a Boomer con. So there's a mythology in the sense of an overarching narrative that's meant to provide meaning, a moral framework, and significance.

And for Boomer cons, it's World War II. All the assumptions, the mores, stabilizing social elements are now rearranged into a kind of post-World War II creation moment. The Dark Ages, before the defeat of the Nazis, was a time of unbridled and evil discrimination and nationalism, of course, the bad kind of nationalism.

The residue of these original sins still haunts us, even in post-World War II land, and must continually be vanquished in the quest for social justice. Now, conservative, you know, Boomer conservatives aren't going to frame it that way.

They're not going to say social justice, but they have, if you think of what ultimate evil is, it's the Nazis, right? And these are the people that their parents fought. And so opposing proxy Nazis, their racism, their exclusivity, their, you know, they're against the diversity that is America and the freedom that is America, that becomes the ultimate good.

And then the Holocaust became the sacred event showcasing the outcome if discrimination should ever gain control again. And I think in this mythos, there's both liberals and conservatives, people on the right and the left of that generation, both tend to agree with this framing.

They attribute in the modern day, you know, different qualities to different groups, like the Republicans, Boomer cons are going to, they're not going to see themselves as the Nazis, right? They endlessly, it seems like, try to say the left are the real Nazis.

They're the real racists. It's the Democrats. And you've heard that one, I'm sure, many times. That's very popular, but it's not popular as much with younger conservatives. I don't think at least, not that I'm seeing.

It's middle age and then older conservatives who want to constantly blame the Democrats for racism because, you know, back a hundred years ago, they were in support of Jim Crow laws or something. It's Boomer cons who want to call, who really are obsessed with calling the Democrats or the liberals, the real Nazi.

Sean Hannity is a perfect example of this, of a Boomer con. And the left loves to call us the Nazis. So they were just, you know, calling each other Nazis. And does it have an effect? I mean, I guess to smear here and there, but I think less so of an effect today than it used to, because it's just meaningless at this point.

We don't even know what a Nazi is. We don't even know what a fascist is. We don't know what a racist is. The terms are so broad. They're attributed to anything we don't like. And that's really all we're saying is we don't like that person.

And because it, it's like calling someone Satan. It's, it's the worst thing we can think of. And younger conservatives today, I think, can think of worse things. That's part of, I think why, not that they don't think Nazism is a problem, but they, it's not something that they have experience with and it's not something they feel threatened by at all.

It's, it's so distant. And so they're seeing the threats in their own life and they see the unraveling of their society by unrestricted immigration. They're seeing the being kept out of the marketplace because of economic factors.

They're seeing all kinds of things that threaten them. And, you know, they're just not as concerned about Nazis. They have problems that a lot of the boomer cons because of their success and their financial stability just don't have.

So accepting the post-World War II consensus is part of this. I'm trying to think what else being, I think, somewhat simplistic, naive, myopic, all of those things factor into it. When someone calls someone a boomer con, that's what they're saying that they're, they're naive.

They don't they I think I've already covered some of this, but, you know, on issues like immigration or education, you know, they, I'll give you, here's one example. And there's actually a bunch now coming to my head, but one is like education.

Public Schools, Prayer, and Naivety About Institutions

So boomer cons would just accept public schools as a given. You got to have public schools, right? That's how we've all, that's how we did it when I was a kid. And we said the pledge of allegiance every, and if we just get back to saying the pledge of allegiance and bring back prayer in schools and you know, we can have better schools or something.

And there's just a naivety there that younger people who have experienced how bad the school system is in many areas. No. Yeah. I mean, what do you want all these, these horrible pagan teachers to lead the Lord's prayer or something?

Is that going to change things? I mean, maybe slightly, but they're going to mock it. It's the problems are so far beyond the rot is so far deeper than a lot of the older boomer cons who assume it's like when they were a kid, um, realize.

And so their younger conservatives are looking at much more unconventional approaches to this. And they don't just accept public education as a given. And they, and you look back in history and you realize that wasn't the case.

That's a new thing. So the boomer cons kind of, um, view the way they grew up as the default setting. And that's something we can get back to. And they don't realize that that itself was a transitional period from, uh, it was, it was in the modern period and in going from a traditional society to a more modern society.

And that, uh, you know, they were part of something that wouldn't last, um, and that couldn't last really. So, um, education would be one factor, but there's a number of them. So, um, probably a lot more that could be said about this, but I since there's really not a lot of resources out there.

And since I've seen this term bandied about quite a bit, I would at least try to give you somewhat of an understanding. And I should probably just qualify at the end here again, even though I've already said it, that I have no problems with people who are boomers.

My parents are boomers. Many of my supporters I'm sure are in that generation. And, um, man, we're going to be sad to see when, uh, the boomer generation is gone, because if you look at the voter rolls, I mean, they tend to vote more conservative, at least there there's no way that we can mount any kind of resistance today against the left, the leftist establishment on a national level, without the help of people from the baby boomer generation, it's just not possible.

We need their resources, um, because they are more affluent. We need their, um, uh, their wisdom. And cause I think many of them actually do have wisdom, but I will say that there is this, um, this neoconservative kind of philosophy and just sentimentality they have for the nation that does that, that ends up being somewhat counterproductive to more aggressive approaches to stopping the left.

And so, um, I think things will change. I think, uh, as people grow up and, uh, traditionally, uh, at least for the last, I don't know, 60, 70 years, at least when people start paying taxes, when they get jobs, they start becoming more conservative.

And so a lot of the zoomers who are leftists now, I think you'll start to see a shift and it'll be interesting to see what happens. I don't know what will happen, but, um, I think that the, there's, there's going to be somewhat of a war going on, whether actual or just politics are going to get uglier because I think the boomer cons, there's a stabilizing element that they bring.

Uh, there was, they lived at a time when both the left and the right had somewhat of a shared kind of like, Hey, we're both not communists. Right. We're both not Nazis. Uh, we, we love each other, uh, even though if we disagree and that's just gone today.

And because we are so post-Christian now, they, and I don't think a lot of boomers even realize that, that a lot of what they're, they were on sort of a borrowed Christian capital. Um, you can see this even with leftist boomers though, like, uh, Peter Jennings.

Remember when he signed off the air for the last time, he used the opportunity for the last like five minutes to, um, go after the, what was happening in the country and just complain about it. And it was so ironic because it's like Peter Jennings, you had a position of influence for how many years.

And that's, I think that's, and then that's boomer. That's not even boomer con. That's just that that's that this sort of detached kind of, um, not seeing the effects of his own, just blinded to his own participation in how bad things got in the country.

And, and that's, I guess the, the my, uh, the myopia, the naivete, um, that some younger conservatives think boomers tend to have, that they don't realize that some of the things they take for granted, uh, like, um, an income tax, like the public school system, like the deep state, uh, that, you know, all these things are working against us and they've been the tools of our own destruction.

And yet there's a loyalty that boomers have to it. Let me give you an example. Um, in closing here to, to really bring this home and hopefully it'll click QAnon is very boomer con QAnon. And you might ask what, how has, well, I'll explain QAnon the whole assumption behind it is that there, there was a, good guys were really in control that we really could trust the system.

All right. So here's the thing. Things look really bad. Obama's presidency now Biden, but, um, things look really bad. The deep state's gonna is going after Trump and it looks that way, but it's not really that way.

It's not really, we can actually trust the system, trust the plan because ultimately we're America. We're the good guys. Trump's got things under control. The good guys are there. They're just waiting their time.

And once, you know, things get bad enough, they're going to come out and they're going to arrest all the, these, uh, pedophiles. And, you know, that was, that was a very boomer con way to look at it because there's this assumption that America can't be that bad.

No, no, no, no, no, no. It looks that way, but that's a deception because in the background, things are all good. The story's going to end well. Uh, America is going to be successful. We're going to make America great again.

Um, and again, I, you know, I, I don't have a problem with trying to make America great, but, um, it's this idea that, um, that that's somewhat inevitable, that that's just America's best days are ahead of her, right?

That's very boomer con stuff. And I realize there's a lot of heavy emotions attached to this. And I have some of them, uh, as a, as a millennial, I have them. Um, I love this country. I love what it used to stand for.

Um, but the more I do study history, the more I realize that there is something that happened really after the first world war, but more so after the second with, um, a, uh, thinking America's just an idea, uh, forsaking, um, traditions to some extent, and just adopting a very vague, broad kind of nationalistic, uh, trustful attitude in the institutions of the United States and attributing some kind of goodness to them that just doesn't exist.

We know, I think that as Christians, man's evil, and it doesn't matter what kind of man, white, black, Asian, it doesn't matter where they are, Africa, Europe, Australia, man's got evil in his heart. And, um, every system is going to have those problems because they're composed of men.

And that's where the problems come from. It's, uh, America, the people of America, uh, at one time, perhaps we're, we're better in comparison. They were good from a human standpoint, you could say in comparison to other cultures.

And that's because of Christianity. But now that we're post-Christian, can you really say that about America? Can you really say that we're good with all the insanity that we've adopted when it comes to, um, the way we treat crime, the way that we, uh, we treat our children, especially killing them, abortion, especially, uh, the sexual insanity that we, we, we wreak havoc.

I mean, you could just go on of all the, the sins that are very common today, but, um, I think that younger conservatives who are, especially those who have grown up in dysfunction as a result of, um, parents and grandparents who pursued self-interest see this more clearly, perhaps it doesn't mean they're more wise.

It doesn't, I'm not saying that they're more wise, but they have somewhat of a bad taste in their mouth for boomer cons. And so, um, that's all I had to share. And anyway, I would love to hear your feedback, whether you think this is helpful in describing what boomer cons are.

And some of you might not have heard the term before boomer con, maybe you're a boomer and you've never heard, you've never been called a boomer con before. Maybe you're not one. Um, but, uh, yeah, I'd be curious to hear if you think that I'm spot on, maybe I'm wrong on some of this.

Let me know in the comments below. It's just a phenomenon I find fascinating and wanted to give you hopefully some helpful information about my observations concerning it. So as I was coming down the mountain, examples just kept flooding to my head that I thought, man, I wish I would've mentioned that.

I wish I would've mentioned that. So let me mention a few of them to you. Cause I think this will help illustrate further what I'm talking about, uh, vaccines, right? Trusting what Fauci said, trusting what Trump said as he was relying on Fauci, that would be very boomer con.

That that's the kind of thing you would see if someone was supporting the vaccine as a conservative, you might see someone underneath that social media posts saying boomer con, right? Um, thinking that, uh, I mentioned QAnon before, but thinking that dark money, Soros money, um, uh, world economic forum influence, things like that are, uh, silver bullets that explain why the country is going in a bad direction.

That's very boomer con because again, it's, uh, it's not in touch with that. That could be a factor, but it's not in touch with the on the ground, uh, reality, which is that people are evil and they're going in an evil direction because they have evil hearts and maybe Soros money can make things look more glittery and, uh, but it's not Soros money that's ultimately causing people to be evil, right?

So that's another example. So trusting the medical establishment, um, trusting the system, trusting what you grew up with, that would be very boomer con, uh, thinking that, you know, integration in the schools in the sixties and the civil rights acts were kind of like the highest good.

That was, you know, one of the most, uh, the things to be the most proud of as Americans without realizing or seeing the consequences of the way that that was carried out and what happened as a result of it.

Uh, you could read, there's a lot of material on this, but, um, you could read the age of enlightenment by Richard Caldwell. It talks about this somewhat, uh, that would be very boomer con. So there's this, um, when someone doesn't realize that the things that they've supported for years might be bad, you know, and that they're, they're doing wrong things.

That's kind of boomer con. I think to some extent I've run into this in the Southern Baptist convention on a church level with people who just are really resistant. And I'm not talking a few years ago, not, not as much today because there's been so much evidence, but there still is resistance among people who believe exactly what I do, right.

And have the exact same concerns, but they don't think not, they'd be like, not my Southern Baptist convention. They can't fathom that this is something that's systemic in the convention, that this is, um, definitional.

The social justice stuff is just taken for granted at the seminaries and they'll continue to give money, even though they're conservative and, uh, they don't agree with what's being taught. They just have kind of a blind trust in the institutions.

And, um, so that would be like, I would say kind of boomer con. So again, I'm not necessarily supporting the word. I don't really use it much. At least I'm trying to think if I've ever used it. I think I have, I probably texted people and, uh, people who understand what I mean by it.

And I've said, yeah, that's a very, uh, kind of boomer con outlook, but I don't use the term that much because it's just not, it doesn't mean something to a broad audience, but maybe it will because it's being used more and more and more and videos like this, hopefully will explain what is meant by it so that people don't get the impression.

It's just going after boomers or boomers are bad or it's, that's not the point at all. It's a specific outlook. It's a specific philosophy and it's a unique, not, it's not just boomers. It's, it can be any generation.

If they have that kind of post-world war two consensus outlook, uh, that cold war era outlook that now doesn't really work as much, that's, um, that would be an example of boomer conservatism. Okay. All right.

I'm done now. No more. Hopefully that was helpful.