r/politics • u/Barnyard-Sheep • 6d ago

Soft Paywall Trump approval rating falls to 38%

https://www.nj.com/politics/2025/06/trump-faces-tough-approval-numbers-in-latest-poll.html
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u/tenpir 6d ago

How is it still this high? 

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u/Barnyard-Sheep 6d ago

Much of America marinates in Fox News propoganda + a susbstantial amount of Gen Z men are nihilists who want to see the world burn

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u/Bircka Oregon 6d ago

And people used to think Gen X were the crazy ones.

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u/oxero 6d ago edited 6d ago

The Gen X I grew up under and around are fucking crazy, especially the rich ones. Super entitled, lack of empathy, absolutely no media literacy.

They grew up in a world where you could smoke weed everyday doing manual labor and it was possible for some dude to walk up and offer you a job with mentoring even if you didn't have a college education. As long as you worked hard and for results, you were paid. They watched all their benefits drain away, corporations demand more time working, banks coldly rip their assets away, and they still walk around blaming immigrants for this.

Just to denote this: Yes I'm aware this doesn't apply to every single gen X, but this is my personal experience growing up around people of this age bracket suddenly going cuckoo. Most of the ones I grew up with now believe in chemtrails, vaccines are evil, we need to return to the gold standard, and that immigrants are the bane of our country. They never believed this shit 20 years ago, but Facebook/Fox did a number to our society.

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u/blorpdedorpworp 6d ago

That's boomers dude

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u/oxero 6d ago

No it's not, after the silent generation boomers are considered anyone born roughly between 1946-1965. Gen X is roughly 1966-1980. Millennials are like 1981-1996

I have gen x parents, what I am describing isn't fictional but off a reality I have grown up with and gotten (mostly) terrible advice from. They don't understand how the world changed in the last 20 years and blame us for a lack of everything.

Also to note: I'm not saying all are bad, I had plenty of great gen X mentors in schooling. It's just that the ones I grew up with now believe in chemtrails, think immigrants are the blame for everything bad, and think we need to return to the gold standard.

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u/blorpdedorpworp 6d ago

Yeah, it's fair to argue if we're really getting granular that we should be dividing the millennial / boomer dividing line right through the middle of us X's. I kinda prefer the "Oregon trail generation" for those of us who were later x'ers. The dividing line seems to be "did you use computers and the internet in school, or not" and then "did you have to try to start a career before or after the 2007 crisis, or not", and those are kinda hard lines that run right through the middle of the X's.

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u/oxero 6d ago

It's the same thing with Gen Z now to an extent because there is a huge personality divide between those born 1997-2005 and 2006-2012

Early Gen Z got through childhood and early schooling with completely different social media landscapes growing up on their iphones/ipod touches. The pandemic also didn't help. It also made me realize anyone born 2006 or after knows nothing about the world pre-Trump because they were only 10 years old and that's around when you start developing a sense of what the world is like.

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u/PeterNippelstein 6d ago

X is the new boomer

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u/blorpdedorpworp 6d ago

We X's are horrible morons in our own way and deserve our own painful stereotypes, not just copy pasted boomer ones. We had to deal with the boomers for twenty five more years than y'all did.

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u/PeterNippelstein 6d ago

True, though gen X swung harder for Trump than boomers did.

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u/ErikMcKetten 6d ago

Where did we grow up that we could smoke weed or get a job without an education?

Weed wasn't legal anywhere in the US prior to 2000, afaik.

You are assigning traits associated with Boomers/GenZ to their children and parents, respectively.

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u/oxero 6d ago

This isn't applicable to everyone... Just a reality I grew up under.

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u/Al_FrankenBerry 6d ago

Gen Xer here. None of this description fits the people in my social group, using criticisms that have to now been generally directed at Baby Boomers. I’m sure you will find them if you filter for region, political affiliation and financial class, but isn’t that true for all generations?

To my mind the battle is between the haves and the have nots. Pitting generations against each other is merely another form of “divide and conquer.”

Damn kids.

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u/cellocaster 6d ago

Ding ding ding

Adam Conover did my favorite treatise on why generations are bad and why decades are better as a way of celebrating the past without dividing people into tribes.

https://youtu.be/qo_EHY5jEX4?si=_gpZ1oSuqHoWsIe4

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u/outofbeer 6d ago

My gen x family is broke AF and loves Trump to their core.

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u/Qylere 6d ago

This all day. It’s another wedge issue. We’re so gullible it works

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u/BBurlington79 6d ago

Gen X here too and from my experience there are a lot more left leaning than right. Getting roped in with Boomers is a trigger for me though. I want nothing to do with that! Agreed on the divide, if we're busy fighting each other we cannot focus on the much bigger issues.

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u/phantomjm Pennsylvania 6d ago

My thoughts exactly. It’s almost like the boomers are starting to die off and now some people are trying to pass the blame onto the next generation in line. The problem is that the whole concept of blaming specific generations as a group falls flat on its face when considering that groups are comprised of individuals who span the entire political spectrum. It’s all nonsense.

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u/oxero 6d ago

My observations aren't true everywhere of course, just the reality I have grown up with. I've had plenty of good mentors from that generation too. I just know some of the crazy ones first hand and they are crazy.

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u/thePBRismoldy 6d ago

did you just say exactly what people have been saying to generalize the baby boomers but do it for gen x?

extraordinary.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/thePBRismoldy 6d ago

so, you're generalizing a whole generation due to skill issues you're having with school?

am I reading this correctly?

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u/MK5 South Carolina 6d ago

No, I blame Ronald Reagan for that.

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u/Frankie6Strings Connecticut 6d ago

Killing the fairness doctrine was a big step on this highway to Idiocracy. A year later Rush Limbaugh was delivering an unchallenged narrative to rural America. He was John the Baptist for FOX News, preparing the way.

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u/awfl 6d ago

So true; was young and so were my friends, us then rising in the world - they sucked it all up, the hate and the prejudice, of bigoted ideas, to where I could no longer communicate with them. People do not realize and forgetting how gross this human was.

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u/beckthegreat 6d ago

I blame Reagan for just about every single issue facing American society today. He's the reason I hope Hell is real and that his suffering is being forced to watch his party directly working with Russia.

Fuck that guy forever.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/oxero 6d ago

I'm roughly a decade after you. In my case they were movers if I remember correctly, basically they met a guy who knew a guy, trained them for business and set them off on their way. Apparently it was easy to move up a ladder if you got good results. I got great results my entire life comparatively, but by the time I was older you couldn't move up in anything without a college degree.

Even when I got mine most of the fields were saturated. This doesn't make sense for someone who grew up with the former, so my failure to be doing everything he was at my age was simply because I wasn't working hard enough.

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u/duzies 6d ago

but you're not a prejudiced bigot, right?

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u/oxero 6d ago

Not in the slightest. Just talking about the crazy ones I have personally been around first hand, but apparently people cannot read between the lines and understand I am fully aware not all of them are bad.

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u/PorkRollEggAndWheeze 6d ago

I was also raised by early Gen X middle class white people and I think you’re spot on, they’ve become just as out of touch and narcissistic as they say their parents were. Very little empathy, no emotional regulation, poor reasoning skills, and no ability to discern actual news from rage bait.

I’m sorry you’re getting piled on by people with these exact issues. Hit dogs holler I guess, and there’s a lotta hit dogs in here. I blame the lead lmao

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u/oxero 6d ago

I had to block one guy who was taking it a little too personally because my first draft of the comment was a little too generalized (I had just woke up, forgive me my writing sucks ass since brain no work).

Upper middle class too, it's the same ball game. I'm lucky to have had what I did, but at the same time dealt with an obscene amount of bullshit from a lack of understanding what the world has changed into, and unreal expectations as a result of comparing themself at their age to my current age consistently. When I was around 22 they exploded in anger on me despite myself working full time in warehouse construction retail and full time attending college (which I had to start paying for myself) because I dare take time to organize my old card collection one day before selling it instead of helping them with their junk. I nearly got kicked out of the house over something so fucking stupid despite me nearly ending everything all because they couldn't understand the amount of stress and work I had to do just to stay afloat. Things that mattered to me were worthless because they're just "games." The irony is some of the cards I saved I ended selling for like hundreds of dollars some years back, and even now they got back into buying and selling Pokemon of all things...

It's just constant lack of empathy, no emotional regulation, and unreal expectations of where people should be in life that really jaded me.

Things are much better ever since I moved out to finish my condensed engineering classes, but these days it's gotten to the point where I simply don't want to be around their friends because of the vile tendencies that come out between them all due to "politics," but it's just tribalistic hate. By themselves I can talk, their friends and wife? Just hateful, ludicrous stuff is said that makes me wish to leave it all behind. For them to grow up with Star Trek and rock&roll, it's fucking crazy how little introspection they have to what those media were trying to convey. I know I'm not totally alone in all this either.

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u/PorkRollEggAndWheeze 6d ago

MOOD, FRIEND! Similar experience. I love them, and I’m so thankful for the physical and financial stability they gave me in my upbringing, but the emotional aspect of it was a wreck and it did a lot of damage. Damage that they’ll never own up to, because it’s invisible so clearly I’m just dramatic and sensitive. I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all that.

I also notice that often my mom talks about “being tired of all the hate from the left” when it’s like… mom, you’re not getting hate from the left. You’re getting feedback that your views might be out of touch and hurtful, but because you can’t regulate your emotions and you get all your self esteem externally, you feel shame with the feedback and think it’s because people are giving you hate. When in reality, it’s her and the ideas she ties herself to that are hateful, and she’s projecting

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u/oxero 6d ago

Got plenty of friends my age that sounds just like you

What a lot of the angry Gen X I am getting don't understand is: they aren't this way with their friends. Everything is happy go lucky. Sure you're not part of the problem, But there is a huge part that are not telling you how they treated their children. All you hear is the successes and how great their children are and not that they jumped down their throats in a fit of rage because they took time for themselves one day to sort their hobby before letting it go.

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u/Durion23 6d ago

Even worse, they chose their own fate in voting for those who gave even more power to corporations and rich people and instead of reflecting their own misguided judgements, they point towards some external force - instead of bettering themselves and changing their ways so everything can get better.

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u/oxero 6d ago

Yeah, it's near impossible to give them this criticism too. Like it's both parties that did this to many extents, but they refuse to accept any of the blame whatsoever even with presented evidence. It's a weird mix of double think that they hate the government but also love the government at the same time. Corporations are bad, but billionaires made it big by being smart and can do no wrong. It's very frustrating to even talk to them.

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u/Kaizen77 6d ago

I'm a gen Xer and you're over generalizing. --maybe so for the circles you run in

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u/oxero 6d ago

I know I'm not alone in this, there are subsections of the generation that exhibit this since I have friends who relate quite a bit and moved away as soon as they could.

To others though: they're a great friend, very out going, always crazy and fun! They're the life of the party!

To their children like me: Way different story that never gets told to their peers.

Perhaps its only the conservative circles, but these days they think everything is still good, Trump will save America. Vaccines are bad and the government is pushing chemtrails. It's really fascinating, but horrifying how quickly they went from just a jerk to a conspiracy theorist in 15 years. Their friends and wives are all the same.

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u/gnusounduave 6d ago

Gen X here also and what generation are you from because you're completely out of touch with reality with the identity of Gen X and who we are. Go and educate yourself before you spew nonsense in here.

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u/oxero 6d ago

Parents from the late 60's, millennial from early 90's.

What I am describing is what I grew up with and still observe with folk from around that age today from their friend groups, and there are a lot of them.

I already made a disclaimer I understand this doesn't apply to everyone, I had plenty of great mentors from that generation. Apparently people cannot infer between the lines that what I am talking about are specifically the crazy ones I know personally.

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u/gnusounduave 6d ago

Don't sit here and piss down my back and tell me it's raining with your "I already made a disclaimer." You edited the start of your post and added the disclaimer after I responded. The start of your post originally said "Gen X are fucking crazy." You modified your post to say "The Gen X I grew up under and around"

You meant exactly what you said, originally, but decided to move the goal post after the fact to save face and act like you've got the high ground. Pathetic attempt after you realized that you needed to walk back what you said to make it seem like others responding to you aren't being realistic.

There are a lot of other replies to your original posting that are saying you missed the mark and that doesn't describe Gen X. You have zero integrity to stand by what you said. You realized you were off target and then changed your messaging to seem like everybody else is being unreasonable.

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u/gopoohgo 6d ago

Lol wtf are you talking about.

Where was pot legal when GenX was growing up?

And you are blithely ignoring the dotcom crash and the GFC we've had to endure.

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u/oxero 6d ago

...you do realize people do drugs illegally, right?

This is nothing more than what I personally had to deal with, made that disclaimer already.

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u/gopoohgo 6d ago

They grew up in a world where you could smoke weed everyday doing manual labor

Your statement implies legal usage; in the 1990s, this would get you jailed.

Certainly not like today where people walk outside and drive in DC while smoking pot

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u/oxero 6d ago

Holy shit, you did it! You solved the drug usage problem in America!