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15 million people watched Episode 1 of Season 4 of Paramount’s smash-hit cable series, Yellowstone.
This is populism television---a tidal wave out of nowhere.
There are several factors involved. The main one is:
A
family is determined to keep its land---the biggest ranch in
Montana---against all odds. Against all attempts to take the land by:
the state government, a gigantic corporate land developer, an Indian
tribe, a psychopathic killer and his hired guns.
The ranching Dutton family will go to any lengths to keep the land.
This suddenly resonates with millions of viewers.
No other television series in history, based on the premise of holding on to private property, has provoked such passion.
What’s going on?
Americans have come to a crossroad and they know it.
The
government and its allies want to gobble up private property and end
it. This is the inevitable outcome of the Parent State in action. This
is also Globalism in action. This is, yes, one of the pillars of
Socialism, Communism, and Marxist philosophy---the outlawing of all
private property.
The
tactics for achieving this goal are many. Outright seizure, crippling
property taxes, a welter of regulations making private ownership far
more risky and difficult.
Yellowstone
pulls no punches. No episode goes by without the producers shoving the
issue of private ownership in the faces of viewers.
And viewers respond. They see who the good guys and the bad guys are.
Of
course, reviews in the press don’t hammer on this issue of private
property incursion and destruction. They acknowledge the popularity of
the series, but they don’t try to explain it. Well, they
wouldn’t. Because the issue is too hot to handle. Much too hot.
At
the end of Season 4, rancher-daughter Beth Dutton schools an idealistic
environmentalist on the biggest threat to the Montana environment: the
corporate developer, Market Equities, who intends to build a new ugly
modern consumerist city for rich tourists on the beautiful
landscape---an airport, highways, hotels, casinos, condo complexes, ski
resorts, etc.
Market
Equities’ notion of private property has no connection to basic family
ownership of land. It’s impersonal. It’s a factory operation. It’s a
partnership with the state government, a job creator, a tax
collector. It’s a non-stop bulldozer. It’s Vegas, brutally injected into
eternal hills and valleys.
And
along with this “modernization,” Yellowstone also puts front and center
the rise of the “modern citizen,” shallow, perky, politically correct,
clueless, petty, nasty under the surface, completely cut off from the
land and its moral values and traditions. Beth Dutton is the relentless
exposer and slayer of this new citizen.
If
ever a fictional television series could cross over into real life and
spawn a greater resistance to foul, elite, giant destruction of
private-ownership, Yellowstone is it.
I can only hope the upcoming Season 5 doesn’t back down an inch from the previous 4.
There’s
another thing Yellowstone is doing. It’s highlighting a stark
competition and war been one side and another, played out on the land of
Montana. Yes, COMPETITION, yet another traditional American value that
has been attacked, downplayed, befouled, and accused of being inherently
UNFAIR.
Hence,
trophies for children who merely participate in sports. “Here, Jimmy,
you tried to kick the ball four times last season and missed three
times, so accept this plastic statue and know we all love you, and don’t
ever bother thinking about who the best athletes on the team are. There
is no best.”
Sports
put the lie to that. Sports, which more and more people are taught to
hate, endure. They’re stark. They’re real. They’re built to decide who
wins. The nightly news doesn’t turn sports into a mush of indeterminate
he said he said. The scoreboard doesn’t turn 101-87 into a tie.
Even with all the corruption surrounding and infecting sports, they survive. On the field. Where it counts.
Kids
learn to deal with it. They find out they can get better if they work
harder. There is a ladder of attainment, and they can climb it. Or they
can try to fake it and fail. Excuses don’t succeed. Complaining doesn’t
succeed.
Parents
can console their children after a loss, but if they try to rip the
heart out of a sport in order to “save their kids,” the whole
proposition backfires. Weakness takes over.
The
world can’t be made fair by trying to strip away talent and effort and
the desire to achieve and the commitment to work. The world can’t be
made fair by trying to submerge these basics. It can only be made into
an idiot’s circus and a government overseer-bureau and a peer-pressure
reduction of language and a massive toleration of stupidity.
In
a society where the Glob and the Group and the Know-Nothing and the
Pussified and the Obedient Little Fascist are promoted as The Good, the
ultimate resistance comes from The Individual.
That’s what I’m speaking of and writing to.
~~~
(The link to this article posted on my blog is here.)
(Follow me on Substack, Twitter, and Gab at @jonrappoport)
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