Rich Cohen may have been right. Writing in Vanity Fair in 2017, Cohen announced that “Generation X might be our last, best hope.” Sandwiched between the crazy liberal boomers and the insane social justice warriors of the millennials and Generation Z, Generation X, those born between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s, may offer the realism and humility required to lead America through its current storms.

Generation X, Cohen writes, are “the last Americans schooled in the old manner, the last Americans that know how to fold a newspaper, take a joke, and listen to a dirty story without losing their minds.” He notes that we’ve “seen what became of the big projects of the boomers as that earlier generation had seen what became of all the big social projects. As a result we could not stand to hear the Utopian talk of the boomers as we cannot stand to hear the Utopian talk of the millennials. We know that most people are rotten to the core, but some are good, and proceed accordingly.”

Exactly right. Generation X grew up with irony and absent parents but will go to the wall for a buddy if he’s in trouble. (Unlike younger generations, we also like sex.)

This healthy and realistic life philosophy seems to be what guides Gen Xer and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). DeSantis isn’t a utopian — indeed, he has a deep suspicion of leftist plans to perfect the world — but wants to improve his little corner of the world, which is Florida. His lack of huge social programs to pander to every demographic makes him more appealing, not less.

DeSantis reminds me of three Generation X celebrities: Tom Cruise, Robert Downey Jr., and Kirk Cameron. These men have impressed with their commonsense approach to life and their lack of hysteria over social problems. They don’t want to see people get addicted or go hungry, but they are wise enough to understand the limits of human interference in a fallen world.

During a 2010 appearance on the David Letterman show , Downey was asked about advice he would give to Charlie Sheen, who at the time was struggling with some substance abuse problems. After Letterman asked the question, there was a pregnant pause where Downey just looked at Letterman. The audience laughs. It was a pure Gen X moment. Unlike the boomers or college campus activists, we’re just reluctant to dive in and save the world. Downey finally offered this: “Don’t get arrested.”

Then, there is Tom Cruise. The Hollywood superstar has tirelessly gone about doing his job, which is providing thrilling entertainment for hard-working people. In interview after interview, Cruise comes across as humble and grateful. You don’t hear about Cruise as an activist, although he does land his shots in a sly, quiet way that’s typical of Generation X. Cruise was an executive producer of the great film Shattered Glass, which dramatizes media corruption. Cruise’s Top Gun movies, making billions, celebrate the American military. DeSantis, like Cruise’s Maverick, served in the Navy.

Finally, there’s Kirk Cameron. The 1980s teenage heartthrob-turned-holy roller may annoy secular liberals, but if you’ve ever actually interviewed the guy, which I have several times, you find a commonsense and highly intelligent man.

“I visit churches all over the country teaching marriage conferences,” Cameron told me the last time we spoke. “I hear it all the time from couples. Moms are concerned about the future for their children. Dads know that something is broken, that the nation’s on the wrong track, and they wonder if America is frankly in the last days of being a great nation. And they’re very concerned. And I want to say to them, I think there’s never been a more exciting time in America to be a Christian — to be a person of deep faith in God. Because it’s when hope seems lost that God parts the waters, right? That’s when he splits the Red Sea. I think this could be a Red Sea moment for you, for me, for us in our American story.”

Cameron sees the main problem in the country not as an ecological disaster or racism, but as a very old sin: pride.

“Pride and ego [are] the root of our trouble. It’s the root of our political troubles, the root of our religious troubles, the root of our family troubles. When we turn instead to an attitude of gratitude, that there’s a loving God creator that’s provided us with this world full of resources and full of opportunities and sacrificed everything so that we could know him, how wonderful is that? What a demonstration of love that is. And a desire to want to reach out and explore ways to make the world a bit more like heaven for everybody else. That’s why we’re Christians. We’re driven by faith and hope and love.”

Cameron has also criticized social media, doing an entire special on the topic. The special, Connect , argues that children need to be trained to want to avoid the soul-killing side of the internet. There is a difference between being told not to watch pornography and acquiring discipline, based on knowledge, the habit of proper decision-making, and finally, self-mastery, to genuinely not want to watch — to be a person who is free enough not to want to watch.

“Our kids, more than anything, need parents who can show them the superiority of living life not for the approval of their Instagram friends but for the approval of heaven,” Cameron told me, “and to love God with all their heart and their neighbor as themselves. We need to model that for our kids and show the superiority of real friendship and relationships, not hollow, fake followers shaping their sense of identity and purpose and destiny in the world.”

This is pure Gen X wisdom. In his Vanity Fair piece on our generation, Cohen describes us this way: “Though much derided, members of my generation turn out to be something like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca — we’ve seen everything and grown tired of history and all the fighting and so have opened our own little joint at the edge of the desert, the last outpost in a world gone mad, the last light in the last saloon on the darkest night of the year. It’s not those who stormed the beaches and won the war, nor the hula-hooped millions who followed, nor what we have coming out of the colleges now — it’s Generation X that will be called the greatest.”

Maybe not the greatest — that’s far too hubristic for us. We’re more like Downey’s superhero Iron Man: not the mightiest of the Avengers, but tough, self-deprecating, realistic, and funny.

Mark Judge is an award-winning journalist and the author of  The Devil's Triangle: Mark Judge vs. the New American Stasi . He is also the author of God and Man at Georgetown Prep, Damn Senators, and A Tremor of Bliss.