Memes

I think when most people say "the rich" it's shorthand for super rich like the people you're talking about.

And pretty much an equal amount actively fought against those policies, but were not politically effective in doing so as a result of complex historical and political factors. The Baby Boomers were and are complicated, just as everyone is, and it's kind of incorrect to treat them monolithically because as a generational cohort, the Boomers were ludicrously massive. So much so that there can actually be considered two dominant sub-cohorts within that generation. Early boomers protested Vietnam and made huge contributions to American racial, gender, reproductive, and sexual rights. Late generation Baby Boomers, sometimes referred to as "Generation Jones" grew up in an era of political malaise, and lived through the economic recession of the 1970s, Watergate, the Iranian hostage crisis, and a bunch of other things that helped to shape their more generally conservative political identities.

That's what I meant by some being dumb as rocks. They face a lot of propaganda and algorithms on the daily and it's probably real hard for them to see through.

I think these go into OP's "dumb as rocks" category.

A lot of them were essentially tricked into supporting things against their interests by a powerful media machine.

As they say never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.

It's hard to draw a line on who's to blame. But I'd say the evil people tricking stupid people are much worse.