For certain reasons, in my house we watch a lot of 1950's TV westerns. Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Death Valley Days, Bonanza, and especially Laramie (Robert Fuller is the house favorite).
There are whole channels dedicated to these old shows and if you watch them in volume you see the common theme. The heroic Libertarian myth of the Old West. Small, or nonexistent, government. Small towns populated solely by good white Christians every day under attack by savages, criminals, and fancy dudes from back east who want their land.
The woman is always looking for a good man to keep her safe.
The rare person of color is the help or comic relief.
Indians grunt, wear war bonnets, and are played by Italians in redface.
The heroes, white men all, drink in the saloon, fight, or hunt down bad guys.
EVERY problem is solved with a gun or a rope.
It is a rare episode indeed where a gun isn't the deciding factor.
A strong man takes what he wants, land, women, power. He doesn't need anything from anybody, especially the government. It's not about right or wrong, it's about manifest destiny and your trusty six-shooter makes you right all of the time -- if you're fast enough.
There were hundreds of these shows in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. All the same. All the same themes. All the same subtle (and not so subtle) prejudices, myths, and ingrained historical falsehoods.
These shows shaped an entire generation.
Shaped how we Americans think of America.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Hollywood is to blame anything in particular. These shows didn't create this mythology, they simply refined it, turned it into popular entertainment, and shaped a viewpoint which echoes generations later -- and you can see the same words and ideas flowing through social media.
You wonder where I'm going with this?
I'm going here. To the West, to the border, where armed white men, vigilantes, take justice into their own hands and are again come to save the day with guns and ropes and edit people of color from our history.
From the ACLU: "Two nights ago, an armed civilian militia organization describing itself as the 'United Constitutional Patriots' arrested nearly 300 people seeking safety here, including young children, in New Mexico. Other videos appear to show even more recent arrests..."
That's where I'm going. Right there.
This is the myth, the heroic white cowboy legend, that Trump's generation sold itself, an America that never was, small, limited, SIMPLE, where problems are solved with a gun and rope and all a good woman needs is a rough man to defend her from the savages outside of town.
When those who call themselves conservatives today talk of conserving "our" history, well, that's the history they mean and they would erase anyone who does not fit their myth from it -- or relegate the rest of us to the help or comic relief.
But America is more than that.
This viewpoint has shaped our thinking for far too long.
This silly small myth has been our national narrative for far too long.
Our history is far richer, far more complex than some Hollywood fable.
And so is our present.
The future must be much more than that.
- Jim Wright