The meme is a very good one. It hits on what Hollywood has played off of for a very long time: people are so starved for anything that so much as nods to their red state American existence that they will accept corrupted stories that ultimately revile and betray them.
This is what Disney did for a long time before the unvarnished wokeness started soaking through the camouflage. Guys like Iger are masters of this. You can’t let the rubes out there know your actual “values” but you help them “progress” by using stories that nod to their own.
You nod to their traditional understandings but you do so ultimately to subvert them. This is what mass entertainment has been about for a long time. So long that what was once concealed now is public and tyrannically enforced and although many disagree it still wins the day.
These stories and popular media, like education, are what ultimately molds the public mind and heart—what ultimately shapes opinion. There is no victory without control of education and media, and this is what the Right ceded over to people who hate it and hate red state America.
In the case of Yellowstone, which is part of the red state-nodding empire Taylor Sheridan has built, starting with Sicario and Hell or High Water, we must say this: the guy is good. And the popularity of his stuff proves the thesis as to what’s desperately wanted by the audience.
And while I do not necessarily think he’s personally, consciously playing the game I describe above, his stuff increasingly ends up bowing to the woke gods.
@matthewdmarsden spoke insightfully about his genius a bit on the show here:
Many aspects, much to say (better to do!), but final point for now: conflated confusion in such shows is also just reflective of actual confused & contradictory understanding & political & cultural state of voters/red state America itself. Which the meme brilliantly reflects.
There was a moment maybe 15 years ago when I realized that all the language in every academic job application was actually saying:
“We specifically do not want to hire someone like you and dislike everything about you: the people and programs you were taught and formed in, what you want to teach [at the time, political philosophy, rhetoric, American government and the founding era, political corruption, and media] and how you want to teach it [the books I would use, the teaching method and approach, the focus of the classes and research, and how I wanted to reform colleges and universities] as well as your entrepreneurial interests—and your ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, and political opinions.”
And it occurred to me that this was obvious, and I knew it to be so, but I had been trained not to think about it directly and was supposed to be grateful to somehow “sneak in” to institutions that did not want me there.
And that therefore my career goals and the entire project I was engaged in (to reform the university) was ridiculous.
I always knew in my heart that only new institutions or those already dedicated to the right mission were the way to go.
I have advocated for this my entire life in every sector of our economy and culture.
But for a brief time I tricked myself into actually believing maybe it would be alright to go the normal route.
I never did it again.
When a system or institution or business is obsolete or broken in terms of principle and purpose, or structurally or at its core, (and, granted, it is sometimes hard to tell when that point has been reached):
You have to either scrap it for something new or rebuild the entire thing.
There’s no skating by this. There are no shortcuts available anymore. It doesn’t matter how inconvenient this is to you personally, or what you’d rather the world to be like, or even what you think you’re good at or an “expert” in or whether or not you think you can pivot into some entirely new field or career or whatever.
You simply must adjust to reality and do what needs to be done. And there’s always something you can do.
This is why I say: the only way out is through.
*This was probably closer to 20 years ago, but who’s counting…
What is happening in regard to Russia and Ukraine while we have no functional President is one of the last, most reckless and outrageous acts from the supposed "adults in the room" who have consistently driven our nation towards the cliff the last four disastrous years.
This is not "democracy." This is the faceless power of failing experts in action: thwarting the will of the people in the midst of the final "lame duck" period of an aging dementia patient of a President. This is a form of masochistic, suicidal recklessness enacted by weak men.
These people are sadly driven by a self-assured but internally crooked path that necessarily end in disaster. Smooth from the outside, they are in truth each AT BEST like the dog who's wrapped himself around a tree and tragically freaks out the more he entangles himself.
The Police Chief also told us that Springfield police curiously decided to encrypt their communications recently so he and other neighboring law enforcement officers still can't hear what is going on in Springfield in real time:
In 2005, "@R_H_Ebright blasted Fauci & the CDC for having 'constructed...a virus that represents perhaps the most effective bioweapons agent now known.'" —@LeonHWolf at @theblaze
@R_H_Ebright @LeonHWolf But what people have forgotten is this:
"Prior to 2020, Fauci was the subject of frequent and strident criticism from many of the liberal institutions that have since ruled any criticism of his actions out of bounds."