From my experience many of them are know-it-all'ish, "smartest in the room", authoritarian types, but not because they actually are smart-- rather, it's a response mechanism that helps them mask their deep insecurities. Think Barry Obozo, or Roger Goodell, or Scott Adams, or Jon Stewart: all text-book examples.
Their unending internal contradiction between "I'm so smart" and "I'm an idiot" leads them to equally confused political beliefs:
- "People are inherently irrational. So we need government institutions to make decisions for everyone. Politicians are people and therefore also irrational, but I'm just going to discard that contradiction."
- "I hate people who are experts or sound smart, because it makes me feel insecure. It's not possible for anyone to know much of anything anyway, even though I'm exhibiting knowledge by making that statement. These elitist snobs are fakers who need to be taken down a peg and put in their place."
- "I don't trust politicians because they are elitist snobs, as described in the previous bullet. But the thought of getting short-changed as an adult just like I did as a child is too much to bear. And the government can get me what I want."
- "There are no such things as principles, or absolutes; everything is relative. Even though the statement I just made was an absolute principle. This view helps me rationalize my contradictory views with regards to politicians and governments; it's ok to steal if it's used for a good purpose!"
- "People are ruled by their emotions; all supposed attempts at reason are actually driven by animalistic urges. So, it doesn't matter what people think: only what they feel-- even though that would invalidate the thought that I'm articulating right now. But this way, I don't need to worry about explaining or rationalizing all of my logical contradictions, which takes a huge burden off of my shoulders."
From where does all of this insecurity, and the Statist contradictions that go along with it, come? I'll let the Wikipedia article do the talking (bold emphasis is mine):
"The generation is noted for coming of age after a huge swath of their older brothers and sisters in the earlier portion of the Baby Boomer population had come immediately preceding them; thus, many Generation Jones members complain that there was a paucity of resources and privileges available to them that were seemingly abundant to those fellow Baby Boomers born earlier. Therefore, there is a certain level of bitterness about and a 'jonesing' for the level of freedom and affluence granted to older boomers but denied to their generation."
To be fair, there are many people from this generation with whom I enjoy working; in many ways, these collectivistic "paint with a generalization brush a mile wide" models are like constellations, or Myers-Briggs scores.
At the same time, I do see many patterns amongst people of certain ages, which is from where these generational models emerged in the first place.