Are You Gen X Whose Friends Think You're 'Right-Wing'? You might want to listen to this.

If you, like me, are Gen X and grew up in a liberal world and used to think of yourself as a liberal, but now feel like the liberal left has lost its mind, you might want to listen to this and see if it resonates with you. I'm Jenny Holland. I write Saving Culture From Itself over on Substack.

From the ages of about 22 to about 30, my social circle was quite large. It was made up of family, childhood friends, high school friends, university friends, friends from summer jobs, friends from work, friends from the bars I was a regular at, friends of my parents.

It was people from all over the world. And in that, of that wide and diverse circle, today, I can be open and comfortable expressing my politics and worldview with about four people. That's it.

That's what it means to be an exile from your own tribe. On social media, there are a lot of people who have had this experience. It's comforting to read their posts and listen to their conversations in which they express that disorientation you feel knowing that if someone you have everything else in common with knew your actual opinions about politics, they would physically recoil and maybe even accuse you of something crazy, like being a Nazi supporter, because, I mean, we're just not.

It's like we can see them, but they can't see us. We can see them because in a lot of ways, we're still like them. We still like the same things, hanging out with our friends, going to brunch, making sourdough, reading good books and discussing them.

We share the same aesthetic, but we are in politically different universes. Is this new? It feels like it's new. Because as far as I remember, in the before times, if you were conservative, you liked conservative things, especially when it comes to things like taste in music.

But today, we exist in this kind of ghostly parallel plane. We may still like the urbane hipster pastimes, but we can really only be ourselves around what were formerly very foreign tribes. Rednecks, Christians, lifelong anti-commies, the kind of people we used to make fun of at the bar.

The other morning, I woke up with a Belle and Sebastian song in my head. So I went on Spotify and I started listening, and I listened to two of their albums for like days. These albums were my constant soundtrack when I first moved back to New York City in 1998-99.

I would listen to them on my Discman, on my commute to and from work. Of course, I would also read the latest commentary in Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone. I was in the tribe, and it was a really great time.

Not to indulge in back-in-my-day nostalgia, but we really had a lot of fun. Evenings drinking beer in the bar turned to all-night parties on Brooklyn rooftops, trips to Rockaway to dip your hung overhead in the bracing, salty water the next day, pleased because you know that one dude who had a car, stopping for lobster or clams on the way back, seeing your friends' bands play and falling in love, just a little bit, with how good they are. Heading to the nearest dive bar after work, mine was Smith's on 8th Avenue and 44th Street.

For a few low-quality, definitely not craft beers, Smith's, by the way, is now closed and has been replaced by a cannabis dispensary, which tells you all you need to know about what's happened to New York. Dance parties and dumbo lofts, back when it was still a little bit dangerous and the streets were pitch dark at night, finding yourself in random people's apartments in Washington Heights when the sun was coming up. These were the memories that came flooding back to me because I woke up with a Belle and Sebastian song in my head.

Of course, our present reality quickly intruded. I caught up with a friend, an old friend from that time this week, one of the four apostates I mentioned earlier, and he told me that someone from the old days randomly got in touch with him and asked, What happened to Jenny? When did she turn into a right-wing freak? This comment made us both laugh. It was a rueful but genuine laugh, because we get that a lot.

I have managed to hold on to one or two very dear people who understand that we can talk about other things and still love each other like we used to, but there's always that dread that you might stumble on a topic that will remind you of your alien status. Anyone who has seen what the liberal left has become and decided to move away from it has had some version of this comment. The what happened to you, man question, but we haven't changed that much.

Sure, we've gotten older, a bit more conservative, as people who leave behind the fervor and excitement and recklessness of youth have always done since time immemorial. I can't pound beers for eight hours straight anymore, I found God. But we're still the same people who listen to Bell and goddamn Sebastian, you know? So consumed was I in the last few days by this thought, I called my friend Jason, who met me when I was 23 and has been listening to my right-wing freakery on a weekly basis now for years.

I told him my theory. The part of the reason my switching sides has been so shocking to people from back in the day is because I was a politically aware young woman who also liked to party and could come up with some pretty decent one-liners. I mean, I very well may have been talking crap the entire time, but when you're a cute 23-year-old propping up the bar with a bunch of single dudes and laughing at their jokes, you can get away with a lot worse than saying you're moving to Canada if W gets elected.

Your social capital is pretty high. So I am the last person anyone expected to be going to bat for Trump and praying the rosary. I described this alienation to Jason, my friend, and wondered aloud, am I remembering myself clearly? He laughed, a reassuringly hearty laugh, and said, you haven't changed at all.

Side note, always make sure you have at least one person in your life that can tell you this. The only major difference, as far as I can discern, is that us apostates, at some point, realized that the legacy media was lying to us about some really basic shit. The Atlantic, Harper's, New Yorker, Rolling Stone, my old companions on the F train, they stopped being chroniclers and became agitators.

Whether it was the moral panic around white supremacy, obviously fake and itself racist, or the moral panic around lockdowns and vaccine-slash-masks hysteria, obviously illiberal and bordering on psychotic, or January 6th, an obviously Reichstag-fire-type ploy, or its uncritical embrace of an obviously malevolent movement that supports child sex changes and men in women's locker rooms and prisons and homeless shelters, or the Trump-is-a-dictator hysteria, if you, like me, are an apostate, it was likely one of these things that turned you. Megan Murphy, an early apostate, and a woman who had the balls to speak up for reality when reality was deeply threatening and she paid a steep price for it, she put it better than I could in her essay on Substack recently, where she characterized how she too is viewed as, and I quote her here, an uncompassionate MAGA pick-me-what-happened-to-you-Megan-you-used-to-be-smart-and-now-you-keep-saying-things-I-don't-like. She goes on, but who am I but a baddie, a woman failing at my womaning by failing to express care and compassion in the correct way, publicly and in line with the good party, the corporate media, Natalie Portman, and my algorithm.

She, like me, was one of the cool girls who could hang and talk politics. She, like me, still has the Gen X indie aesthetic. Because that's what it is.

Our politics may have changed, but our aesthetics have not. I think I'm a little bit surprised at how much that actually matters. Thanks for listening.

You can find more of my stuff at JennyEHolland.substack.com and don't forget to hit that like button. Thank you for saving culture with me.

My comment is not really on target for the point of this YouTube clip but -- I think Gen Z lives in a world that is VASTLY different from Gen X (or Boomers, of course). The idea of having a social circle that is "quite large" and then listing 8 separate categories from which friends can be drawn ... Gen Z has no idea what that is all about. It's so sad.

“If you’re not a liberal at 20, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at 40, you have no brain.”

There have been many variations of this, attributed to many different people.

I went to high school and college in the ‘80s. I was pretty conservative, but had friends all over the political spectrum.

I know the year where most of my liberal friends parted from me: 2008. After that, we couldn’t talk politics.

What is so weird is the number of people I knew that were against certain positions in the 80s, but now they completely embrace them. And how quickly they would deprive me of my rights if they had the chance.

I too am GenX, born in 73. I still have all the same friends from high school. I didn’t know any leftist freaks in school and none of my circle has changed so we are still the same people. The only ones who have left my circle are my direct family. My parents who chastised my daughter and I for being the only ones who didn’t take the poison shot. My parents blame me for my divorce so they ignore me for major holidays and invite my ex and her new husband to thanksgiving and Christmas. Yeah, that was the final kick to the balls for me. I don’t need them or my useless sister in my life. Just because they are family does that mean I have to suffer decade after decade of just being their doormat? Well, I’m not and life is much better for it.

Gen X is unique not because we had to go outside and find something to do, older generations did that also. For thousands of years.

What does make us unique is we were the last generation to do so.

“... someone you have everything else in common with...”

You dont or you wouldnt be diametrically opposed.

Yes, if you are the kind that is going to have a meltdown over me “yucking” your “yum” then you arent worth being friends with.

Im not going to go along with something another likes just because its trendy or because some idiot generations ago decided that being dishonest like this is the way that they thought things should be done.

If youre a chameleon then everything about you is a lie and I just dont have time for you.

People that are afraid of not having enough friends are the ones that will find out much to their dismay that none of those people were really ever their friend.

I noticed that my friends became unhinged about the time Trump became President. They quit believing in “facts” and started to just repeat narratives. Facts became like Kryptonite and could draw genuine anger. It almost got to the point where their ignorance was a source of pride. If you questioned why they believed something, they just reverted to “everyone knows that” and got really anxious.
It was also the time when news became “stupidized”. Reporters started interviewing each other because they know they could stay on message.

There does seem to be some mix of how grounded a person is in their beliefs or understanding of the world based on how much thought they’ve given such matters, and the need for validation from others in their social circle.

Its actually another thread that you recently remarked on and I was going to answer the same then and I thought you would make the connection.

Ill go fine it...

Same here, regarding friends that became unhinged after Trump was elected. It’s almost like if if those creepy shows where the government transmits a hidden signal and people turned into zombies or something. Almost too strange to really understand. The worst ones in my case were the ones that always thought they had the moral high ground and were always blind to their own ignorance and intolerance.

I can kinda understand it. They had Trump beaten with the whole impeachment, felon, rapist, Nazi narrative and he crushed them. Just destroyed them and they had to sit and watch it because there was nothing they could do. They had him arrested and going to prison. Instead he not only won the election, he won the popular vote.

I'm an old GenXer. My parents were not political at all. But I remember writing Jimmy Carter as a 5th/6th grader asking him to up the defense budget. LOL

As a high schooler, I could not stand the character Harry Goldblum on Hill Street Blues. Bleeding heart lefty always worried about the criminals.

As a 18 year old college Freshman, the first person I ever voted for was Ronald Reagan in November 1984. Also in 1984 I learned it was illegal to resell tickets to the Jackson's Victory Tour at a price higher than I paid for them. That turned me into a libertarian, LOL.

They had him arrested and going to prison. Instead he not only won the election, he won the popular vote.

You are on to an important point. It is because their version of reality has been wrong all along. It is very difficult to admit you accepted an understanding of reality which is false.

Every man who has been a bad relationship that is falling apart is aware.
“If she knows how much I’m hurting, she’ll take me back for sure”

Trump broke their heart

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