Well done.

They're assholes.

Glad you took my post as intended. After I posted, it occurred to me my post could be construed as a cut at YOU, not the Shit Gibbon voters. Your post is the meat to my reply and as they say, the devil is in the details!

These were the geeks sitting on the sidelines and just making money or talking about how wonderful the War in Vietnam was.

The hippies were always hippies. The yuppies were always yuppies. You're suggesting that hippies got older and richer and turned into yuppies. However no such thing happened.

I'm the same age as the people you're discussing here and I experienced those times. Nobody I grew up with would have ever voted for Nixon or Reagan, it was our parents and grandparents who voted them into office. In our youth the baby-boomers had remarkably little political power, and that's why we were sent to fight the Vietnam War even though we thought it was immoral.

The only political recourse we had was to strike and protest against the war, but that didn't make us hippies. That made us war protesters, and probably quite a few joined the Democratic Party because of it. What turned the tide on the Vietnam War was the fact that parents started protesting along with their kids (baby-boomers) because they started to get it. The war wasn't going to end just because Nixon was president, just because he said he would end it. Boys came home in boxes and the thing never ended and the Republicans didn't care. It wasn't their kids that were dying.

None of this has anything to do with Donald Trump because Trump was a rich-kid draft dodger. He never protested the war and he didn't give a shit since he didn't have to fight it. Let other kids die in Vietnam, it didn't matter to him. He had money to make and money is the only thing that mattered to him. (Then and now.)

Very few people that I personally know who are near to my age (I'm 66) voted for Trump. I don't see this as a generational acceptance for someone who would have been rejected by a different generation. I see it as Americans who were already racist but ashamed to openly admit their racism, suddenly saw a way to vote for a racist man who spoke their racist thoughts openly. It's unfortunate that so many people in the USA are closet racists, but apparently they are or they were last year.

The other thing that I see is that Putin and his Russian buddies have hacked our voting machines and turned our elections to benefit themselves, and we're too stupid to see it or stop him from doing it. THAT needs to be changed immediately. After we've fixed that problem we can go to work immediately on the other things.

Rebelliousness first came with Rock & Roll. Our parents hated it and were very suspicious and afraid of it because it was blatantly about sex. You can see it in movies like Grease.

In the sixties the rebellion became real because we were fighting in Viet Nam. The thing that the Millenials and everyone else who came after the Boomers don't know anything about is what it's like when every able bodied 19 year old man is drafted to go to a war. Vietnam was on the other side of the world and no one knew why we were there. We were told it was to stop the spread of Communism, but we started to wise up about it. We knew the war wasn't about protecting our country. It was about what politicians wanted. It was about our own spreading Imperialism. The backlash was we became the peace movement and in our naivete and illusions we turned to drugs and sex and peace and love. We didn't want war and it made no sense to us and we knew we were fodder for obscure and nefarious politicians to throw around. No one had invaded us. No one attacked us or our interests.

We all watched our brothers and boyfriends and friends get inducted into the service and go to fight a war that just didn't make any sense at all. This divided the boomers into who we are now. The liberals versus the Trump lovers. Guess who had it better all along. It was the Boomers who went to college and acquired careers. Trump's followers are not known for their higher education, their liberalism or anything much that's positive. For all their lives they've hated the other, whether it was the other colors, the other foreigners, or other religions being followed.

In my experience the Trump loving people have always been here. Always. I remember them when I was a child and a teenager and an adult and all through my life. They were mostly in the closet racists and misogynists and zenophobics and spoke in whispers behind their hands to each other about the others in derogatory and horrible ways. Many times I and others like me were mistaken for them because of being white and their generation. The only difference between Trump's followers now and those who came before was that they've emerged into the daylight with their hatred and resentment. It just seems that this is a new thing. It's not.

Very insightful.

I think we posted at the same time, saying roughly the same thing.

I'm a Gen-Xer and I see some like me, some boomers, and some millennials of all stripes. The one thing trump supporters have in common is their misguided and/or their faux libertarian views.

They are not the original libertarians of the Left borne in European socialist thought, which stressed cooperation over competition (but still distrusted government). They are part of the reactionary Right and claim to hate government, but really don't. They love government that protects and benefits them only. They are not very bright, have little impulse-control, and are quite primitive.

They are charlatans just like their commander-in-thief.

Lots of younger people voted for him, too. Yesterday, while over in Vermont, I followed a beaten up Tennessee Lexus with a Trump/Pence sticker. It stood out because you rarely see Trump anything around here. As I drove past them I glanced over and they looked like a couple of early 30's meth heads.

I don't think Trump's base can be conveniently pigeoned holed into such a convenient box. There is a huge, long list of sub-groups that find a common affinity for whatever demented mishmash Trump is serving up at any given hour. Boomers are a large and diverse group, but they are merely one, minor category of Trump voters.

I suspect that more Boomers are here in DU, and many more of us voted for Hillary and Bernie, not Trump.