I was a bit surprised how much vitriol the Boomers and Gen X (like Scalzi) actually possess towards Bernie Sanders, so I started thinking on why.

To be clear, I am not a strong Bernie supporter and have never voted for him and would’ve preferred he didn’t run in 2020. That said, there is an enormous dichotomy in how all the people below Gen X view Bernie and people like Scalzi and older feel about him. This emerges from a few trends of those generations, I think.

The first is that they are from a time where there was some reality but mostly the illusion of comity and bipartisanship between the parties. Tip O’Neill working together with the Democrats, Clinton and his collaboration with the Republicans to pass the execrable crime bills and welfare reform — in the Gen X/Boomer mind, these were halcyon days of bipartisan coalitions and happy alliances. The reality, of course, was much different but that’s how they perceive it.

To those two generations, however, Sanders destroys this felicitous fantasy of civility and decorum by opposing in the strongest terms the ideal and the actuality of bipartisanship. He resists conservative plans completely and won’t “cross the aisle” at all. For this, they hate him.

Leading into the second point quite naturally is the severe Boomer/Gen X nostalgia. This is perhaps — in the US at least — the most powerful force in politics. Many people yearn for a varnished and preserved version of the 1950s that they did not even live through, and people like Scalzi are even worse for they yearn for yearning for it, unconsciously. This nostalgia leads to the hatred of any substantive change. Since Sanders wishes to make substantive changes, they despise him despite that his program will greatly help their own children and grandchildren.

The third reason for the Bernie hatred, dare I say, is more understandable given the precarity of the financial situation for many people in the US, including those in the Boomer/Gen X demographic. This is the natural fear of Sanders altering enough where their house prices fall and they lose a little of their retirement security. Of course if Sanders actually made the changes he’s been discussing they’d be more secure in their retirement, but fear of change is natural and comprehensible. I feel sympathy if not empathy for them as they’ve largely been responsible for despoiling the world and destroying the dreams and the aspirations of their own children and grandchildren, and are attempting to avoid the culpability for this, while often being in an uncertain financial situation themselves. It’s a lot of cognitive dissonance for anyone to handle. And wow, they do not handle it well at all.

Those, then, are the three main causes behind the Boomer/Gen X Bernie hatred. He is a repudiation of everything they stood for and the enshrouded narrative by which they’ve lived their lives. There’s a natural aversion, even if they don’t articulate very well, mainly noting how “unpleasant” and “annoying” he is without further examination. Examination, of course, would lead to actually thinking about why they feel this way and that would be painful, so this they do not do.