Generation X did not drift to the right by accident; long before politics, they were shaped by latchkey childhoods in the 80s and 90s that trained a specific emotional survival strategy. In countless “Anywhere, America” houses, kids came home to empty rooms, a key under the mat or on a string around their neck, and a TV for company instead of an attuned adult; they were fed and housed, but their inner lives went largely unnamed. Parents were overworked and emotionally unequipped, offering structure without intimacy, managing feelings instead of exploring them, teaching children to adapt silently: everything is fine, and if you aren’t, pretend you are, because help is not coming. What later got praised as toughness was early emotional self-reliance, hardened in the glare of divorce, AIDS, crime headlines, mass layoffs, and glossy consumer culture insisting that everything was “awesome.” That survival code followed Gen X into adulthood. When faced with economic instability, workplace ine...