This is not a negative statement to say that all the cities of all past civilizations crumble into dust. It is simply fact. Somehow it appears there is one guy in Hollywood who figured that out and for this nanosecond in time is capitalizing on that simple fact.
Slightly off topic – right now one of my favorite shows is the long running Suits with the Duchess of Whatever – but with some really great shots of the greatest man made city of the last couple of centuries built on the Island of Manhattan – New York City. Magnificent. A few hundred years ago it was just an island. Not much else. What is now New York City was fit only for savages and without one skyscraper built by man. Maybe a Teepee or two, but not much else. Now it’s a jungle of skyscrapers and towers, that despite the best efforts of throw backs from the middle east, still thrives. Yet, it too will return to dust or desert or water or whatever God’s nature dictates to us long after man and his glory is gone.
Oh yes, that guy. Back to the topic at hand: Taylor Sheridan. Yellowstone. 1883. And a few other shows he developed it seems so that he could buy the 6666 ranch in Texas. Art imitating life. No, this is not the fictitious Dutton’s Yellowstone, this guy actually (with investors) now owns one of the largest ranches in North America – well actually the fourth largest in Texas – but who’s counting. Yep, with the cash he was getting from his hit series and some help from investors – Taylor purchased the 6666 in 2021 for about $350 million. Great.
My personal opinion is that the best show of the lot he’s created so far is the gritty, exciting, real and quite depressing 1883. To me it never quite made sense if you just wanted to get from the East to the West Coast that you’d hire an aging Captain and his black Sargent side kick to trek across the country in covered wagons when there was a more reasonable mode of transportation available. For one thing, if you wanted to get to Oregon in 1883, it made more sense to simply take the transcontinental railroad that was finished a few decades earlier and travel from San Francisco north. Much easier terrain.
But the idea of actually traversing the virgin territory of the plains of North America, now that was a different deal altogether: crossing the Sierras and ending up in Montana and Idaho. The pure tenacity and will to make that incredibly difficult journey explains how the Duttons became the Duttons. Sort of explains how one family was able to acquire and hold on to such huge ranch despite all the grifters and thieves wanting a piece or more of their paradise. Funny, the Crow at the finale of 1883 used that word, but no more spoilers.
Obviously Yellowstone put Sheridan on the map and rightfully so. Probably my favorite scene from Season one of Yellowstone, and the one that encapsulates what makes America and some Americans different from the rest of the world, is Costner aka John Dutton, Patriarch, stomping on the brakes of his truck as he saw a tourist bus and Chinese tourists trespassing within a short distance of a not so friendly Grizzly bear. Grabbing his rifle, Dutton runs out to warn the foolish Chinese tourists that the Grizzly bear was not some harmless Panda zoo creature and they were putting their lives in danger. One of the tourists speaking Mandarin (or Cantonese) gets upset when Dutton tells the group that all the land they can see in every direction is HIS and they are guilty of trespassing on his land. That Chinese tourist – obviously not understanding the idea of “private property” – says something to the translator that Dutton should not have this much land – he should “share”. Dutton responds: “This is America we don’t share land!”
The Marxists and the evil doers don’t understand the need for property – whether it be a small Condo in Manhattan or one of the largest god damn ranches in North America – that is what makes for a free vital society. Yes, it can be violent and brutal to defend. Something different about a person who owns land versus one who doesn’t. One cares for it. Some are willing to do whatever it takes to keep it. The other – just moves on, often leaving their trash behind them and complaining that they are oppressed. Sheridan does a respectable job of telling the tale. And until woke Barbie came out and got the Uniparty back on track with their subtle pink propaganda Globalist and Marxist non sense outselling the real American dream at the Box Office – Sheridan’s notion of the rugged individual and fight for his property symbolized the American ideal or Cruise and his reboot of Top Gun was winning at the movies. You know the Uniparty was not going to take this lying down. After all, they are clever evil devils. Just a little reminder of where America came from: Life Liberty and Property (Locke’s version) was changed to Pursuit of Happiness (in Jefferson’s Declaration). But today the Uniparty totalitarians are doing their best to make everyone in America a renter or indentured servant sad to say. But without a sense of Property and Ownership – what is man but a serf or a slave?