Nerds, Jocks, Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Political Parties

 Okay, I think I've got it figured out.

Most of the powerful politicians are baby-boomers, and baby-boomers grew up in a time when there was a cultural divide between "young" and "old." So they acted young when they were young, and now they're acting like what they think an old person is supposed to act like.

Except that in order to preserve the political divide (which is important, because the more the two parties hate each other, the more money they donate to their own party), they have to bring the gen-xers on board, except that gen-xers don't see themselves as all that different from the younger generations. (There was no WW2-style drop in the birth rate, younger people listen to a lot of the same bands as we did, and even our music and movies, we can't bring ourselves to call "oldies." We call them "retro.") We're not going to yell at young people for tearing holes in their jeans, because we still think it's cool. We're not going to yell at them to get off our lawns, because we can't afford to buy houses with lawns. And when political pundits try to bait us with "traditional gender roles" and these young people who don't even know what gender they are, the gen-xers just look at our Poison album covers and say, "what's the big deal?" You can't even really scare us with the threat of war, because most of us grew up expecting to die in a nuclear explosion anyway.

So, the political party strategists have finally taken a hard look at the ONE thing that can turn gen-xers against each other. (Sure, make a bad adaptation of Transformers of G.I. Joe, and you'll piss us off, but we'll all be pissed off together, so it doesn't help the political parties.) But anyone who grew up from the late 70s to early 90s saw ourselves clearly divided into two diametrically-opposed social categories: JOCKS and NERDS!

Once the political strategists figured this out, you notice how the political rhetoric changed? Suddenly it was no longer about Christian values, or socialism, or foreign policy, or saving the trees, or the free market, or gay couples. Suddenly, all the Republican rhetoric was "men should be MANLY men!" and "we must not look weak on the world stage!" and "grab that pussy!" and all the Democrat rhetoric is becoming all about "future technologies!" and "I believe in science!" and when there's clear sexual misconduct by a politician, we treat it just like the "Revenge of the Nerds" movies: It's only bad when the OTHER guy does it.

They're hoping that all the gen-xers who were jocks in school will support the Republicans, and all the gen-xers who were nerds in school will support the Democrats, and keep sending in those campaign donations to spite the other guys.

Then Elon Musk comes along and fucks up the narrative.