Shane The Remake Meets Godless

I grew up watching Hopalong Cassidy and Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger and the Cisco Kid on TV. These cowboys all had sidekicks. They all stood up to outlaws. They were all fearless. They all rode horses and had six guns strapped to their hips. Hey, I got a Hopalong Cassidy outfit for Christmas when I was 4 years old.

There was nothing new about a hero on a horse traveling with a sidekick and confronting evil. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra gave us "Don Quixote" in 1605. Quixote was obsessed with knights. Wace introduced us to King Arthur and the Round Table knights in 1155.

The American Western movie was our unique spin on knights. Westerns were morality plays in which good confronted evil. The good "guys" persevered by strength of character, intelligence and skill. Westerns helped us reaffirm our faith in goodness and the rule of law.

American cowboys were our knights setting out to correct wrongs and using might for right. American cowboys were our role models.

I was 7 years old when "Shane" came out. It was a different kind of Western. The knight was weary. His guns were packed away. He went to work as a farm hand for a family struggling to survive.

The family was the source of strength and goodness. Identity was derived from family membership. The strength of the community was based upon families supporting each other. If the family failed, we all failed.

Evil brothers want to get rid of the "dirt farmers" and take their land. They hire a professional gunman. The gunman has no moral code. He kills for money. He baits a hard working, but not too bright, farmer into a gunfight. The farmer is killed and the rest of the farmers panic.

As farm families prepare to leave the community and disperse for fear of suffering a similar fate, Shane straps on his gun and rides to town and confronts the evil brothers and their hired gun.

Shane rides in alone. The farmers are no match for wanton criminals. They are growers, not destroyers. They are simple people.

Shane does what needs to be done. He does what he has trained to do. He has been revitalized by his stay with the Starretts. He doesn't want to see them and the other families either driven out or killed.

The movie ends with Shane riding off into oblivion. Unbeknownst to Joey Starrett, Shane has been mortally wounded. Joey calls after him to no avail. Shane has become an anachronism. Joey and his family are the future.

We still had Westerns after "Shane". "Gunsmoke" was on TV for 20 years, but the Western was in decline. There were attempts to revive the Western in the movies. "Silverado" tried to woo us with a loose confederation of independent characters, but it wasn't well received. 

The American public was not having any of it. The American family has been blown apart. Westerns were replaced by robotic macho men slaughtering their opponents without showing any hesitation or the slightest trace of an emotion.

It's no accident that the "anti-hero" has become dominant in a material world of high technology and personal acquisition. Opportunism is the new morality. It's every man for himself and women are commodities to be bought and traded. We are in a "what's good for me is good for the world" mode and there are terrible consequences for us because of that.

Yep, evil has come to town and we are personally ill-equipped to deal with it. Pursuing popularity and following fads has produced an electorate of vapid, amoral people. Conformity is the preferred mode of interaction - don't make waves.

Obesity, depravity and substance abuse are the villains we have to contend with now. We don't confront them at "High Noon", we pay them off daily. Happy hour is not a time of reckoning and rebirth. Doing a line has replaced public service.

The Trump outlaw is part of an international gang. He is a member of a highly organized crime syndicate. He has sold out our country and aligned with a criminal state run by a modern day fascist who kills his critics.

So here we are, a broken family, struggling in the wilderness trying to survive. Outlaws are lurking in the shadows waiting for us to come along so they can pounce on us. They plan on taking everything we have of any "worth". They want our self respect, our dignity and our souls.

The outlaws are holed up in Washington and we are disorganized, disenfranchised, and divided. Will we luck out? Will we hire on a ranch hand who comes to our aid - a ranch hand with a lifetime of experience facing off with thugs - someone to level the playing field?

Robert Mueller has been cast in that role and tasked with that chore. He is leading a posse and moving in on the traitor who has taken over DC. He is armed with the law. That's right, this battle will not be won with a shootout. This will only be won in courtrooms with a series of guilty verdicts.

Our Congress has abandoned us to the lawlessness of Donald Trump. It's up to us to protect Mueller and shore him up while he bears down on Trump. We can only do that with our votes and it's looking more and more like those votes are going to be dependent upon how the women respond - the same women we have relegated to commodity status.

If you haven't seen "Godless" on Netflix, you should. It's a Western series about a town full of women whose husbands have died in a mining accident. Thanks to unchecked criminality in their territory and a ruthless newspaper publisher, the only thing standing between them and total annihilation at the hands of a ruthless gang is their courage and resolve. They do not disappoint.

The fate of our Republic is in the hands of voting women. Our men might as well have been lost in a mining accident. Our lawmen in DC are either on the take or trying to find a safe place to hide. If this guy and other's like him are elected it's all over. We won't have another season.

Holy Moly!