Tag: Yellowstone

Why Even Try: That was the message behind the ending of the ‘Yellowstone’ television show

I wanted to like Yellowstone, but I am so sick of all these dumb Indian stories where they are portrayed as some superior but victimized race of people who had their land stolen from them.  That whole line of dialogue was signaled from the beginning of the five seasons of Yellowstone, the popular television show that has been streaming for a while now.  But Taylor Sheridan, the writer, and director of the show, as well as the producer, did some experiments that pulled the show in a direction that looked to be a love letter to the MAGA movement at times, and I thought it was pretty good after I finally sat down this year and caught up to the whole thing.  It’s a story of the value of land ownership standing up to those who want to take it in the realm of big business, making it a classic Western story.  And it had its moments.  But the way it ended predictably fell back to the ridiculous Indian narrative, and after all that fighting, the show ended with part two of season 5 with John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner, dying at the hands of his jealous, adopted son, and the family giving the land back to the Indians.  And those same Indians went to the family cemetery and knocked over all the tombstones as if to erase that the Duttons were ever there.  This is significant because a series of spin-off shows have led to this main show of Yellowstone, which tells the story of many generations of the Dutton family fighting for their land, only to have it all gone in such an unspectacular way.  The show’s central theme then was not about property rights but about reconciling a loss that the Indians experienced because the Duttons moved there in the first place.

The truth is, and we are about to see this worldwide under the next Trump administration, the world wants to be protected by American ideas.  And that was what winning the West was all about in the first place.  The Indians were a global culture of backward-thinking nomads who were anti-civilization.  And some of them, at the time that Columbus arrived in the New World, wanted very much to be a part of that American experience.  And that was certainly the case in all these Taylor Sheridan stories about settling the Dutton family in the Yellowstone area.  The Indians weren’t evil, but they weren’t doing much to help themselves until Western civilization came along.  Reservation life might have come across as unfair, but so is a harsh winter with no shelter.  It all comes down to perspective, and for political motivations, we tend to romanticize the Indian lifestyle in unrealistic ways.  And that is certainly the problem with Hollywood writers who discover late in life the lavish lifestyle of Western life once they can afford to buy ranches of their own and get into the cowboy life a bit.  Taylor Sheridan certainly fell in love with Western life.  But coming from a Hollywood perspective, and this is obvious when you visit places like Jackson, Wyoming, where many celebrities leave Hollywood and set up homes in that area, the messages often get mixed.  And they try to bring their Hollywood liberalism to the rough and tumble Western lifestyle, and those two things usually don’t go together, which was the case with the entire Yellowstone television series.  Do you want to make a show that people want to watch, or do you want to make a political statement that changes from season to season?  And unfortunately for Yellowstone, it ultimately came down to a political statement about Indians and how we took their land from them unfairly. 

The indigenous people’s argument goes back to the invasion of Canaan by the Hebrews and persists to this day, and it’s the way that global socialists argue against their capitalist rivals.  And in America, the socialist movement latched on to the Indians and made them into an argument that America should have never been formed.  Under this next Trump term, we’re going to find out that many places in the world want to join the American idea because it’s good for them.  And it was good for the Indians, too.  But as we know from history, they weren’t the first to settle in America.  There was already an empire of very tall people who were part of a global pyramid-building culture that predated the Maya and Aztecs to the south, down into Mexico.  Off the coast of Cuba, under a lot of water, are buried cities that predate the Indians of the plains by many thousands of years.  I would say that the Indians are part of a failed culture that had its light put out long before the arrival of Columbus or the start of America as a nation and a set of ideas that freed the individual from the clutches of collectivism.  And the Indians were collectivists, which is why modern Marxists like them. However, from a historical perspective, they were a failed people from a society that tried but failed to emerge to build their own version of the city-state, leaving them mostly at war with each other when Columbus arrived.  Actors like Taylor Sheridan and Kevin Costner want to believe that, like the Chinese, the people from India and all over the East have superior knowledge about how to live with nature instead of imposing human will over it and that the key to happiness is just preposterous.  And every Western these days, because Hollywood has so many broken people, Westerns are made with that perspective, which gets irritating. 

And Yellowstone as a show just wasn’t very good without Kevin Costner.  They killed him off in the first episode of the second half of the season, and from there, the show just tanked.  Taylor Sheridan got too big for his pants and thought he didn’t need Costner.  So, the two parted ways over creative disagreements.  Costner was going through a divorce and wanted to make his own western series for the movies. A lot went wrong in everyone’s lives, and it showed in the show.  But Taylor Sheridan didn’t help himself by throwing gas on the fire with Costner, and instead of working with him to finish the show, he just killed him off, thinking the rest of the cast could carry the show.  Which they couldn’t.  And left to finish the show without Costner, they retreated to the Indian subplot and made that the moral of the unsatisfying story.  And it turned out to be garbage, not worth watching.  And that’s how Yellowstone ended in a political climate where the world is seriously thinking of becoming states of America, such as in Canada, Greenland, and Mexico.  After all, a country is just a set of ideas, and many places in the world want to have the same ideas as America because it’s good for them.  And it was good for the Indians, too.   What was bad for the Indians was a socialist political movement that wanted to exploit them to undo America’s creation as a capitalist country.  And at the end of Yellowstone, which started as a quest for land and capital, the dream of a family was broken and sent back to the heathens, the failures of world populations and society as if to say that none of it was worth while in the end.  So why even try? 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

A Love Letter to America: Season 5 of ‘Yellowstone’

Now that I have watched the Yellowstone series it has confirmed something that I had suspected, which made it a more urgent project.  There is a lot more going on with it than just an entertaining television show.  Taylor Sheridan and the gang are making a point and they know who their audience is, which was obvious at the start of Season 5 if you know what you are looking for.  Of course, Yellowstone is the popular television show for Paramount Plus, which many have called a love letter to the MAGA political movement.  Over the various seasons, Sheridan and the gang obviously struggled with this impression.  After all, they are Hollywood lefties and they didn’t want to be viewed by their peers as a bunch of radical right-winged lunatics.  However, the show has become increasingly popular over the five seasons because the topic of a modern Western has captured the hearts and minds of an audience hungry for content that represents their concerns.  Taylor Sheridan has become a scorching commodity since all the shows he’s producing suddenly are doing very well, not just with Yellowstone, but also the spin-off shows like 1883, 1923, and Bass Reeves.  There are more in the works, but these are all excellent shows, and in my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d see them on television.  They remind me of the old westerns I grew up with, like Gunsmoke and Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie, and I didn’t think Hollywood could produce anything like that ever again.  However, with Taylor Sheridan and Kevin Costner, along with others, there is a revolt against Hollywood that has been going on in Montana and Texas, which has its own kinetic energy that is giving voice to America, which is crying out for its own existence. 

If you’ve ever dealt with Hollywood types you will know that they are cosmetically, outright Marxists.  But around the catering truck, they are like everyone else.  They are mostly Marxists because they have to be to get work, and the financiers of their projects want global communism; otherwise, their projects don’t get greenlit.  But on rare occasions, sometimes you can flip the script on that process, and when someone like Taylor Sheridan is successful, the greed factor takes over, and the finance people forget about Marxism and turn to the glitter and glory of massive profit, which is one of the great attributes of capitalism.  Yellowstone is not a show that could have been made for state-run television.  It is a love letter to the foundation of America, and it is oozing in patriotism.  With the success that Taylor Sheridan has found with these projects, he is moving in a more obvious direction politically, which is similar to what we’ve seen with Elon Musk, President Trump, and Joe Rogan, all people who voted Democrat but have changed over time, based on what they have seen.  At the beginning of Season 5, when John Dutton becomes governor of Montana to essentially save his ranch from developers who want to build an airport, during the swearing-in scene, there is a long pause before putting his hand on the Bible, where Kevin Costner is throwing obvious red meat to the Hollywood community.  The purpose of the scene was to show that the Yellowstone production had not gone native and thrown their lot in with God, even though Kevin Costner does end up doing so and swearing to protect the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic.  But the scene’s purpose, even if Taylor Sheridan will never admit to it, was to throw the Hollywood Reporter types into a tailspin of doubt.  Because the rest of the season, the next eight episodes are a love letter to American life that I never thought I’d see in a Hollywood production again. 

In real life, Sheridan and much of the cast have found themselves enamored by the majesty of the flyover states, which has rarely happened to famous Hollywood personalities.  And rather than hiding from it, they have embraced it more.  In the case of Sheridan, he has bought ranches and is desperately trying to tell the story of everyday Americans in this struggle with a true phantom menace of Marxism without calling it that.  There are many parts of Season 5 in Yellowstone where Beth Dutton, the daughter of John Dutton and the apparent future of the show, delivers some of the best pro-American lines that have ever been done in entertainment, on the level of Clint Eastwood and John Wayne.  And they were possible because of that setup of ambiguity at the start of the season with the Bible.  Usually, with these kinds of projects and the success that comes with them, any romantic notions that a producer like Taylor Sheridan receives take the ambition out of the projects, and they become more corporate as more people are interested in attaching themselves to the success.  But not here; Yellowstone has become more authentic.  And even though they probably find the idea repulsive, Yellowstone is more MAGA in the notion of Make America Great Again.  They may not want to admit that they like President Trump.  However, they are after the same things Trump and his supporters wish for in life.  We want our country, and we want to love it.  America is speaking and doing so loudly at the heart of the Yellowstone series and all the Taylor Sheridan projects. 

I don’t think Yellowstone planned to be this way from the beginning.  But what it has ended up becoming, and Taylor Sheridan himself, is an authentic love letter to the creation of America.  As I became more interested in these Taylor Sheridan shows, I caught him on a podcast with Joe Rogan talking about the western 1883 and the genuine plight of a new nation needing to fulfill the needs of Manifest Destiny, where advertisements around the world were begging people to come and settle America for a piece of it.  And much of the world, under various forms of tyranny and the early versions of Marxism, wanted more than anything to have a piece of their own life, even if it meant having to come and fight Indians to the death just for the opportunity.  Taylor Sheridan, throughout his various television series, is grappling with this problem, and it all leans toward the reasons America needed to exist in the first place and is stepping away from the Hollywood Marxism that has so ruined entertainment to its present condition.  And because of all that, people love Yellowstone and the other Taylor Sheridan projects.  I am indeed a fan.  There is some real heart in what is being produced around the Yellowstone series, much better than The Godfather or Dallas, which it has been compared to.  Yellowstone is a love letter to America that has needed to happen for a long time.  And it’s a story told by people going through their own transformation into patriotism.  I have always been conservative.  But I am happy to see more people becoming that way as they learn the real history of America, even if it takes success to free them enough to have that point of view.  Watching Yellowstone is worth the effort to get to Season 5.  And whatever happens in the future with the show, what has happened up to this point can’t be undone.  It’s part of America’s story now; and many people will be better because of it.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Great Westerns of Taylor Sheridan: From a perspective of the world, something very unique is going on in America

As of recently, in 2024, it’s true. I had never watched Yellowstone or any of the spinoff shows featured on Paramount Plus but has now been moved onto the Peacock streaming services and NBC as a primetime option.  Yellowstone is one of our current time’s most popular television shows, and I was curious about it.  But my wife and I have not had the time to watch it.  From what I saw of Kevin Costner, who is one of the stars, is that he’s too lefty for me.  And with Taylor Sheridan being a Hollywood actor, I wasn’t interested in watching those types of people make a modern western.  So I put it on hold.  After watching it recently and catching up on many of the shows and spinoffs, especially the Western series 1883, 1923, and Bass Reeves, I can say that there are liberalisms in them I don’t like at all, such as language and sex.  The families are too dysfunctional even though they crave not to be, which naturally comes from the messed up minds of Democrats, who then grow up to be actors, writers, and directors.  One thing that turned me off was that during the production of the show a few years ago, while Yellowstone was at its height of power, as everyone knew what kind of show it was at all levels of production, especially from financing, Kevin Costner showed support for Liz Cheney over President Trump.  So I blew off the whole effort as just another work by a bunch of lefty Hollywood types and did other things.  However, so many people have been talking to me about it and wondering if I dressed the way I do because of the show, that I finally decided to catch up to everything. I can say that it is an excellent show.  A lot is going on.  But as a work of art, our culture is screaming out for attention and respect in so many exciting ways that I think Taylor Sheridan has stumbled onto something significant, and he can’t make enough shows fast enough to fill the need out there. 

Uniquely, I travel a lot and often find myself on the other side of the world watching Asian television.  And all through Europe, they love on television American westerns.  It’s only in America these days that Westerners have been looked down on because there is a genuine Marxist push to destroy our culture, starting with the things we enjoy about it.  But I’m not saying what I do about Westerns because it’s only a regional perspective.  I’ve seen what the rest of the world does in art, entertainment, and literature.  For instance, on television in Japan currently, there is a series called The Tale of Genji, a trendy book from Kyoto about a lady waiting during the 11th century.  I watched some of it in my hotel rooms and what I could stream from referrals by friends.  I enjoyed it enough to grab and read the book while traveling through airports on some of those long layovers.  So when I say that Yellowstone is great, it’s within the context of the world, not just from an American perspective.  Some significant themes are being explored in these Taylor Sheridan shows that are important to the perpetuation of the human race, and some real soul-searching is going on in them that can’t be overlooked.  And I think they are just fantastic and reflect something I have considered since Joe Biden was put in office in 2021. 

Westerns can save America, which I discuss in my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business.  Classic American Westerns, whom I had been referring to, would do just fine if America had ever lost its way, which we are in an age where that has actually happened.  I talk about often that after that horrendous election, my wife and I many times, sometimes with our entire family, packed up and traveled all over the Wild West to reacquaint ourselves with America because it was obviously under attack, and I needed to understand what the heck we were fighting for.  I have a few souvenir cups I use around the house, one from Wall Drug out in South Dakota, one of my favorite places on earth, and another from The Big Texan, from Amarillo, Texas, and my grandkids like seeing them and thinking about their travels with us to those places.  And maybe the Yellowstone show means more to us because we have been to the places where the show talks about, from the Yellowstone park itself to the vast areas of West Texas.  I finished writing my book while on the road in Roswell, New Mexico, and we traveled a lot around West Texas while the rest of the country was on lockdown due to COVID-19.  I also gained an appreciation for the backbone of America, especially when compared to my experience around the world.  My opinions about these things didn’t just come out of nowhere but were formed from experience; by the way, Taylor Sheridan moved from Hollywood, bought a ranch in Texas, and started thinking about the contents of these television shows.  His work is uniquely American and timely, and there is a genuine love in his work for the discussion.  I wouldn’t say that these shows are making the MAGA movement for which President Trump is the spokesman.  However, all of them spawn from the same concerns of American citizens, and these shows capture that sentiment perfectly.  Probably unintentionally, but they are all part of a process of Americans working out what has happened to them over the last hundred years. 

I watched a recent podcast with Joe Rogan and Taylor Sheridan talking about one of the spinoff shows, 1883, and how good it was.  People forget a lot about why the West had to be won, and I think Taylor Sheridan is a lot more sympathetic to the American Indian than I am.  But he tells good, honest stories about the natural history of the American West and how the American government wanted immigrants to populate Western expansion to fulfill the idea of Manifest Destiny.  It’s interesting; most of the world was so oppressed by old-world rules and regulations that they would have done about anything for the prospect of free land in the vast spans of the American West.  They didn’t always know they were going to have to fight Indians for that free land, but it says a lot about human beings that they were willing to fight just for the opportunity to be free of corrupt governments always in their daily lives, the kind of communism we see in Europe and Asia to this day, or the aristocratic kingdoms of that western expansion period.  The story is not about how the Indians were killed for their land as much as it is about why people wanted to flee every corner of the world, and still do to this day, to get away from micromanaging governments and to have a chance to be free.  At the core of the modern Taylor Sheridan westerns is the theme of all his shows, and the conflict that happens along the way is compelling and exciting to all human beings.  But we are waking up to honesty about everything that always needed to happen and wasn’t talked about enough in previous westerns that are unique to these Taylor Sheridan projects, where they are coming from a Democrat perspective and migrating to a classic Republican platform politically.  And I see a lot of hope for the future because of these creative efforts and the way people yearn for them with great fanfare.  And they are certainly worth watching!

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

When You Build Something, There Are Always Lazy Losers Who Want to Take It: Lessons from Yellowstone and What it Means for America

I haven’t changed my mind on Yellowstone being run by a bunch of liberal Democrats.  But as I have said, until a few weeks ago, I had never seen a single episode.  However, everywhere I go, including in the park, everyone asks me if I dress as I do as part of the “Yellowstone” look inspired by the show.  Of course, the answer is no.  I have dressed the way I do my entire life, well before Yellowstone came along.  But as I said, I always hear references to that popular Paramount Network show thrown in my direction, so I thought I’d finally check it out with my wife.  We enjoy watching shows on various streaming services, but usually, there isn’t much time for that kind of thing.  We travel a lot, and I’m involved with a lot, so there hasn’t been a window to sit down and watch a show like Yellowstone, which is now in its fifth season.  But now we’re all caught up over the last three weeks, and I can say it’s a good show.  I get what they are trying to say, and a couple of themes crucial to the consciousness of America are emerging here that are certainly worth discussing.  The show itself, as written and produced by the actor, Taylor Sheridan is quite a commentary on the role and value of American life.  One of my big hang-ups was Kevin Costner, who starred in the show.  He has been in many good westerns, but he also supported Liz Chenay over Trump, so he kept my interest away from the show until I knew more about how his role would play out.  But Yellowstone, in every way, is good stuff, excellent entertainment.  And I’m not surprised that America has fallen in love with the show as the best entertainment that is currently available, anywhere. 

A few years ago, as the Biden administration was put in place by corrupt globalists intent on the destruction of America, I went out west with my entire family to get away from it for a while.  We traveled to Yellowstone specifically in our convoy of RVs, which was the trip of a lifetime.  Along those lines, we found ourselves in Cody, Wyoming, on a hot night in the summer of rodeo season.  So we all went out to dinner from our very excellent campsite and went into town to experience an authentic rodeo, and it was one of the best nights I had ever had.  My whole family was there with me to experience it, kids, grandkids, and others and I hated Joe Biden and his kind of people so much that a night in Cody, Wyoming, was just the right thing for me, which was a very American flag waving sort of MAGA patriotism.  Leading up to that rodeo, we had all traveled through South Dakota, to Mt. Rushmore and Deadwood, around the areas where the Sturgis Bike Rally always occurs, so we were having a wonderful time rooted deep in the heart of America and the kind of people who most make sense to me.  Additionally, we spent a few days in Yellowstone Park, seeing all the famous sites worldwide.  We were in the exact areas where the show Yellowstone took place.  So much so that everywhere I went, people asked me if I liked the show because it reminded them of John Dutton, the way I dressed and walked.  I didn’t know who that was.  It turned out to be the Kevin Costner character, which wasn’t something I took as a compliment.  I’ve also had many local people refer to me as Rip because of my role in the community.  I didn’t know what that meant.  But I do now, and I get it.  I understand all the references.  But the whole time we were at Yellowstone, the actual place, and people were deep in the show then; I hadn’t yet watched a single episode.  But now that I have, and having been there for an extended period, I think I have had a unique perspective on the whole movement in America that is going on behind the scenes, starting with that region of the world and this television show that has managed to capture that spirit in a bottle for all to enjoy.

There are a couple of significant takeaways from the Yellowstone shows that are specific to our times as America struggles to define itself in the wake of an apparent communist invasion that has taken over our government and financial system.  The first is that hard work is the way to bring morality to any good culture.  That is the constant theme of the show, where characters faltering on their moral compass find redemption through challenging work, which always tends to fix anything.  That is very much a message I support, and I am dazzled to see that a television show meant for mass audiences has been willing to tackle this critical issue.  They used to make television shows like this; Little House on the Prairie comes to mind.  And that this show is being made now says more than what might be assumed from a popular entertainment option.  It has the same values as that night at the rodeo I talked about in Cody, Wyoming.  Good stuff!

But the second thing, which is the whole background of the entire show, is the nature of human beings themselves.  It also centers around the premise of evil and what causes it, which is that when you work hard to build something, there is always some lazy loser nearby who wants to take it from you.  When you work hard, parasites always want to steal your hard work so they can have the benefits of what you have built, because they are too lazy to obtain it for themselves.  That something could be land, a woman, a new cowboy hat.  It could be anything.  But the core of the discussion is that there will always be those who want to take value from those who do create it.  And that if you really want to have a civil society, you must protect those with government who produce value.  Not to use government to protect and empower the parasites, and that is the essence of everything the Yellowstone show is all about.  If I hadn’t been there myself and thought hard about these things, I don’t know if it would be so clear.  I don’t know that the creators of Yellowstone were conscious of those traits.  I think Taylor Sheridon left Hollywood to learn ranching out in the flyover states and fell in love with the lifestyle I talked about in places like Cody, Wyoming, during rodeo season, which goes on every night during the summer.  He and the cast and crew were talented enough to capture some of that magic into a magnificent show.  But more than that, likely not to their liking, it is the essential political platform for the MAGA movement with Trump at its head.  The anti-communist political party doesn’t want takers with government alliances to steal what we worked hard to build: our families, homes, and lives in every way.  Because that is the essence of life in the West, what made Western expansion necessary and even justified?  And why do the progressives of our day, the renamed communists from the global Marxist movement, want so badly to destroy our view of Western life?  I dress the way I do to spit in the face of those Marxist ideas.  And seeing the rest of the world catching up is enjoyable, which I’m very happy to see. 

One of my daughters is a professional photographer, and she was with me when I bought a new hat at Jackson Hole.  And I was doing a bit of a photoshoot at the west end of the square, a spot sacred to me because it’s where Clint Eastwood finished the fight in one of his movies, Any Which Way You Can.  People watching assumed I was part of some entertainment company the way people were gathered around me, and people kept asking me if I was a stunt double for Kevin Costner’s character in Yellowstone, which, of course, I said no.  I had never seen the show.  However, for the people in Jackson that day, it was more about the spirit of the show they were thinking about, what it meant to America, and why they were even in Jackson Hole.  They saw me with my big cowboy hat purchased right there on the square with its giant 4” brim, and they wanted to meet the characters they saw on that show in real life.  Because they wanted to see an America that wasn’t fiction but something they could believe in.  Based on my experiences in that actual region, and now watching that show with an eye toward its cultural significance, I think we are in for a promising future in America, where the communists are going to be beaten back from their European roots in ways they can’t even imagine, currently.  And Yellowstone, the show, is part of that process by way of art and entertainment, followed by actual social expectations.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

‘Yellowstone’ Has Been Made By A Bunch of Slack-Jawed Hippies: I’ve never seen a show because they are way too left for me

As of now, I have never seen one episode of the popular television series Yellowstone.  I’ve been to Yellowstone, the actual place, but I have never watched the show.  My wife and I have been looking for an opportunity to take the time to watch it, but as of 2.20.24, have not yet done so.  I’m sure we will at some point.  The main series and offshoots look pretty good.  I think they are great for what America has been going through lately, but honestly, they are too liberal for me, from what I do know of them.  The producers and actors, from my vantage point, are money-hating hippies from Hollywood, where the plot lines are all about the big, powerful money people beating up on the poor ranchers, which are classic Western themes.  A lot of good is talked about in these kinds of shows regarding the value of property ownership and family values, and those are the parts of the show that match the public interest.  But for me, they are all a bunch of Liz Cheney-supporting filmmakers who have built the Republican Party into the lame duck that it has been for far too many years until Trump has come along to bring an expectation of victory to party politics that it didn’t have before.  Classic westerns, and these modern ones, never really developed a proper relationship with money and power that is best reflected in American culture, and that has been frustrating to me, which is why, after all this time, and given the content, I have not yet watched the show.  It comes up a lot because of how I dress, and people think the show inspired me.  In reality, it’s likely the other way around. 

Since I was in the fourth grade, I have dressed the way I do, with a cowboy hat and boots just about everywhere I go.  I’ve always worn a hat of some kind, especially cowboy-style hats.  Many times, I go into public dressed in full gunslinger mode, complete with a poncho.  Especially in my 20s, I dressed ready for a gunfight everywhere because, in a lot of ways, every day was a gunfight.  I walked around the Kenwood Mall in Cincinnati dressed like I was off the set of A Fistful of Dollars, which is the Sergio Leone western with Clint Eastwood that I always loved because those movies embraced capitalism in a positive way, and I always liked them over the American westerns that had lots of socialism sprinkled into them by Hollywood.  And I always wanted to make it clear to those around me that I was not like them.  The cowboy hats were a clear signal that I rejected most of the premises they had built their lives around and that, for me, like a robe in the priesthood, my hat was a sign of an embrace of capitalism and a culture of property ownership and a rejection of European civilization as servitude to kings and aristocrats.  For me, the cowboy hat means freedom from those tyrants and a rejection of their desire to control our every move.  As things started getting more complicated socially in the 4th grade, I started wearing cowboy hats to let everyone know where I stood, which is still my practice.  I seldom ever leave my house without wearing a cowboy hat of some kind.  It’s certainly not something I have done lately because of the success of the show Yellowstone, as many have asked me. 

Several times a week people tell me I would love Yellowstone because of the character of Rip, who they say I remind them of, because of things I do in my community.  I’ve seen a few interviews from the Yellowstone cast that tell me that a train station is involved and that sometimes those kinds of eliminations of the enemy are part of living life.  When people won’t leave you alone or the people you tend to associate with, you can’t play patty cake with them.  Bad people don’t understand anything else.  So I get it.  And because of these constant comparisons, it has generated interest in me to watch it at some point.  But my wife and I don’t have that kind of time to watch television.  I watch a lot of news, and we watch documentaries, but my lifestyle is just too busy to watch a streaming series.  I read around three books a week and we do a lot of family activities.  I have to pick what I do for leisure pretty carefully.  A few years ago, when Kevin Costner, who stars in Yellowstone, came out in support of Liz Cheney over President Trump, and the creators of the show rejected the idea that Yellowstone was “red state” entertainment, I put the show on the back burner.  I’m not particularly keen on the whole Indian subplot.  I see all references to “Native Americans” as a communist attempt to degrade American culture by putting the nature-worshipping heathens of a primitive culture on a pedestal they don’t deserve.  I have studied Indian cultures and am not very keen on them.  They were collectivists and best represented by mass group behavior.  I have never been much of a fan of Kevin Costner movies.  He has made some decent westerns, my favorite with him was Silverado.  My least favorite is Dances with Wolves.  I don’t like movies that put down Western expansion at the expense of the Indians.

I like Teddy Roosevelt’s opinion on Western expansion and think it was one of the most important things human beings have ever done in the history of the world.  Many of the Hollywood ideas about Western expansion came from European migrants who brought all their socialism with them, and they found in the Indians someone they could identify with.  And at the core of Yellowstone, from what I do know about it, is that kind of reverence.   For me, a good western is where a gunslinging hero makes a lot of money, wins a beautiful wife, and kills all the bad guys.  But these Yellowstone kinds of filmmakers like to cry about victimization and how the all-powerful rich people and their government pawns destroy the little guy, and the little guy has to fight back, always on their heels and looking over their shoulder.   I can’t relate to that mentality.  My favorite westerns were movies like the Dollars trilogy, where Clint Eastwood never worried about being outnumbered or out financed.  He always won his gunfights and nobody was better than him.  And that carried over into other movies he did, like High Plains Drifter, one of my absolute favorites, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Pale Rider.  You can keep The Unforgiven.  It was only good in the last five minutes.  The rest of the movie was a hippie diatribe from a bunch of Hollywood losers.  So, with all that in mind, you can see why Yellowstone still hasn’t been watched in my house.  They may dress the way I do, but that is more of them coming into fashion than me being inspired by it.  They are copying people they have seen in the world, and they put them in a television show.  But there is a lot they don’t understand about American culture, even if what they do get is something that starving Americans wanting to see something good about their country cling to.  I like seeing shows like Yellowstone being successful.  But for me, they are still being made by mind-numbing hippies who have a lot to learn.  Money is not evil; it reveals evil in people who would otherwise conceal their nature from the judgments of the sane.    

Rich Hoffman

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