Yep. I’m from Indiana (I live here again) and we used to go to the Indiana version of the Waffle House and play Risk all night because we were wild and crazy teenagers. It was like Denny’s but scuzzier.
Again, my father was a socialist. He wrote a his dissertation on Shaw and the socialist aspects of one of his plays. He was British and said he was never more proud of his homeland then when he helped it usher in the National Health Service with his vote. When I moved here to Terre Haute, Indiana, he made sure to get me to take him to the Eugene V. Debs museum because of how much he admired debs. How does that make him an 80s liberal? Do please explain.
My mother is pre-Boomer (born soon after the U.S. entered the war) and has been incredibly progressive her entire life. She has never voted for a Republican. She marched for civil rights. She wanted me to know that women and men are equal and that color and religion and ethnicity should not make you dislike someone. She taught me about sex (appropriately) when I asked about it at 3 or 4 years old rather than shielding me from it. My brother and I both have (had in my case, but that’s another story) gay best friends who were also best man at both of our weddings. She always welcomed them even though my brother and his friend became friends in the mid-1980s. I remember asking my mother what she would do if I was gay and she said she would love me no matter what I was. I don’t specifically know her politics, but my dad, born even earlier (1931) was mostly the same way. He definitely had his prejudices- although he would deny it- and he was a lot more sexist than he thought he was, but he was also an outspoken socialist until the dementia got too bad for him to be outspoken about it. One of the last things I was able to tell him before he was too far gone to understand was that Bernie was running for president.
I have certainly had a lot of issues with Boomers and people older than them, but it is far from universal, but I am really proud of my parents for always being progressive.
They got more conservative as they got older. All those hippie kids who protested Vietnam and experimented with drugs and sex ended up voting for Reagan.