The million-dollar question I saw over the weekend, when people looked at the demographics of so many “No Kings” protesters, was, “Why are there so many boomers at these protests?”
Your parents were raised in the Depression. Your fathers fought in WWII.
— Eric Matheny 🎙️ (@ericmmatheny) October 19, 2025
You were raised in a post war economic boom by the greatest generation of Americans who have ever lived.
What went wrong?pic.twitter.com/ah2A9IomBI
It’s not just one thing. It’s multi-layered, as so much of human behavior is.
Before going any further, as I have learned in my professional life, there are two cohorts of boomers. It’s not a monolithic generation. The first cohort is the Woodstock boomer. The conscientious objector who protested against the Vietnam War and “Tricky Dicky.” The second cohort is the post-war, post-draft, Saturday Night Fever group. I’m a member of this one.
There was once a much bigger divide between these two groups, and even within that first cohort, not all were anti-war or pot-smoking hippies. The first one was exceptional in that it was much more politically engaged than any other young generation before or after it, including my cohort. While older boomers were more in their element at a peace protest, smoking dope and contemplating the meaning behind John Lennon’s lyrics, my group was more likely to be found with a keg of beer at a toga party. Some of us may have hated disco, some may have loved it, but my group was in universal agreement that nothing, including Washington, D.C., was going to get in the way of a good time.
As we’ve aged, the general divide between these two groups has narrowed. Most of us, thankfully, are not as serious or unserious as we once were.
That said, the groups you see at anti-Trump, anti-ICE, anti-MAGA demonstrations are mostly a smaller portion of that large first cohort, old hippies and their friends. Based on my knowledge of many in this group, I’ll venture a combination of explanations for why they are there.
Recapturing Lost Youth
Some people go to high school reunions, and they try to get “reacquainted” with that boy or girl they dated in their teen years. They do this, not because they still really are attracted to ‘the person,’ but rather it’s a last-ditch effort to reconnect with their own lost youth, their glory days, and to do this, they feel the need to be with someone who was there.
The same is true for the older boomers who hold signs and line streets for causes they don’t even understand.
Dallas liberal No Kings protestor couldn’t name anyone on Dallas city council or who the mayor of Dallas was. pic.twitter.com/aLpbpdvATb
— Tony Ortiz (Current Revolt) (@CurrentRevolt) October 18, 2025
Protesting always did satisfy a desire in them to feel that they’re making a difference, and that their lives and actions have meaning. As the clock ticks down, they are more desperate now to make that difference.
They’re Rudderless
Another issue is somewhat related. Many older boomers feel rudderless. This is a generation that, in huge numbers, rejected religion. They led the way on divorce, abortion, broken families, which they broke, while serving their own capitalist desires by ushering in the dot-com boom and bust, massive stock gains, and huge tech innovations, creating Silicon Valley.
Morally and ethically, they have little to ground them. The only constant in their lives has always been politics. From George McGovern to Kamala Harris, their north stars have been people equally unmoored. In other words, politics is their religion. It’s how they self-identify. It’s how they mollify themselves as a way to avoid confronting their own personal failures.
Some don’t want to admit that their abortion was what it was, or that they have taken advantage of others in the form of paying dirt wages to illegals as housekeepers. A huge number of these boomers grew up in the suburbs. Mom and Dad paid for their college. They never faced economic struggle or hardship, especially the ones who took faculty jobs on college campuses. There’s still a bit of self-loathing over that.
They Pushed Their Kids Away
As employees, most did what was expected of them, which was to work for someone else until they retired. Their employers’ priorities were their priorities. They made personal trade-offs and sacrifices to keep those good-paying jobs. They put their kids in daycare and delegated the lion’s share of daytime parenting to a non-family member, usually in a large-group, institutional setting. Too many boomers were spent by the end of the day, and so they abdicated hands-on parenting after work. Many of their kids felt and still feel rudderless, too.
The dream that most boomers bought into was that in order to “keep up with the Joneses,” you had to send your kid away to a good school, and they did. Two-income families took second mortgages out on their four-bedroom homes, and they borrowed to the limit to send their kids to the best colleges, which almost always were far away from home.
Those kids went away to college and never came back, save for holidays, weddings, and funerals. They met someone at college, or that’s where they were recruited to work for that big company in Chicago, Dallas, or San Diego. They planted roots there, they met someone, they got married, and started families of their own.
Grandma and Grandpa Boomer are now hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from their grandchildren. They “FaceTime” once or twice a month, maybe see the grandkids two times a year if they’re lucky. They feel bad about that now, too.
Too Much Time on Their Hands
Many boomers now have a lot of time on their hands. They need to get their mind off the decisions they’ve made and the mistakes they’ve made, which they are now paying for. Politics beckons.
It must be reinforced that most boomers do not fit the profile of what I just described, but there are enough of them to ponder all of this.
This is footage from the No Kings Day Protest in Bainbridge Island, Washington
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) October 19, 2025
- They’re all white
- They’re all old, many likely in their 70s
- They’re all definitely glued to the mainstream media at home
The media is radicalizing and brainwashing people. It must be stopped pic.twitter.com/9BHjICbtyN
Nothing I’ve said to this point gets at the issue of why all of these boomers lean so far to the left, and presumably why intelligent people are so easily manipulated into voting for and supporting people and causes who will ruin their country and ruin their lives.
For some, it’s brand loyalty. They’ve always been Democrats, and they will die Democrats. They will surrender all critical thought to anyone with a D after their name who will tell them what to think and what to do.
For others, it’s that they are easily manipulated through the media. They still have a landline and cable TV. They sit and watch CNN and MSNBC all day long. They read the legacy media in paper form, be it the New York Times, the Washington Post, or their local daily, which is usually a cheap imitation of the New York Times.
On social media, they have iPhones, they use Facebook mostly, and they are in the same algorithm-created bubble that you and I are in. The only difference is that our bubble is conservative, theirs is leftist. While we conservatives can’t avoid legacy media that gives our perspective balance, they are never exposed to conservative media. Their reality is that which is spoon-fed to them by Wolf Blitzer.
They’re now on some entitlement programs. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are the most common ones. At their age, it’s never been difficult to convince them that Republicans want to steal their retirement incomes from them. So there’s that.
A lot of the protesters you saw at “No Kings” could live just fine for the remainder of their days without Social Security. Their economic security is such that they really are insulated from the impacts of the policies they support. That can provide someone of any age a skewed vision of the real world.
Finally, it’s about community. Some leftist NGO comes along and offers them a free Starbucks gift card, invites them to a rally, and they now have a reason to leave the house, meet like-minded boomers, and feel like they’re a part of a community, a part of something bigger. They can make a difference. And they now have something to tell their kids on FaceTime when they are asked, “What’s new?”
Just don’t expect a nuanced answer if you ask them to explain what’s really happening in Gaza, or Ukraine, or on the southern border, or with crime in America’s major cities. All you’ll get is a regurgitation of the last talking points they heard on CNN.
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