When I was a kid (think “the seventies“) we admired quite a few outlaws. Robin Hood was a favorite, as were the pirates who we, when we were lucky (with our three channels of TV and no DVRs) could catch in reruns of black-and-white movies. But, being American, our greatest outlaw heroes came from the period of time known as “the Old West” or “the Wild West,” which was more or less the period between 1850 and 1900 in the United States.
It wasn’t until I was older and spent time learning about this period of time that I became more familiar with some of the lawmen of the era. When I was a kid, the names we knew were Jessie and Frank James, Cole Younger, Billy the Kid, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I don’t know why – feel free to ask an anthropologist or sociologist who studies kids who grew up in the seventies in the American South – but the point is, me an’ the kids I grew up with loved outlaws.
If we take a step back, what were these so-called outlaws? Sure, they did bad things, things that I’m not encouraging here, but they represented something larger than themselves. These weren’t the rich and privileged; they were common people. They stood against a status quo of robber barons, railroad barons, cattle barons, and the banks, and they represented the ordinary folk who were just beginning to find themselves once again under the thumbs of “the man.”
How the mighty have fallen
Fast-forward and here we are. I look around me (I live in Tennessee (GO VOLS!!!)) and I see a lot of people who pretend that they’re anti-government and that they care about individual rights, and I suspect that many of them harbor some childhood appreciation for the “outlaw” figure that has persisted throughout their lives. Like those outlaws, they’re gun owners and they’re happy to brag about it. And yet I’ve watched as these people are led about like cattle through nose-rings, following a political party that hasn’t, for years, had anything to offer beyond rhetorical lies and who in no way represents the gun-toting, independent outlaw spirit that so many of us grew up pretending to be.
Again, I’m not saying that the old-west outlaws were justified in their actions; I wasn’t there and I didn’t walk in their shoes. But I’ve been an armchair historian for much of my life, and I’ve learned that it’s a lot more complicated than the watered-down story that the average history book provides. I can also see that in feudal Europe, when most people were peasants who were completely under the thumbs of landowners with titles, this is exactly what we’ve allowed to happen today. Do you think you own your house? Go one year without paying your property taxes and then let me know who really owns your house. Think you’re free? Sure, you’re free to be homeless, without access to food, shelter, or medical care, or you can take a job making some rich people richer while you live paycheck to paycheck.
All around me today, I see a whole new breed of wannabe American outlaws. These “tough” men and women, people who pretend they’re strong and that they’re standing up to something… they’re sheep, being led to their pens to be milked, shorn, or slaughtered at the whim of their masters. And they’re utterly oblivious to it.
For all their flaws, Jesse James, Robin Hood, Cole Younger, Billy the Kid—they weren’t led. They were leaders. They didn’t let someone else tell them what to think; they made their own determination and stood by it.
Some of us—we outlaw-loving kids of the seventies—grew up to be law-abiding, tax-paying, contributing members of society. We still have that spark within us, though. We express it with our votes, our words, and our actions, but we’ll never kowtow to a bunch of grifter politicians and billionaires. Politicians who put their hands on a Bible that they pretend to believe in and swear to uphold a constitution that, through their actions, they work to destroy. These are the billionaires who, with the stroke of a pen, could end world hunger and poverty, who could set your dumb ass and everyone you ever passed on a street up for life without sacrificing their welfare in the slightest.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. An influential musician of my day was The Charlie Daniels Band, and you might remember that one line from their song Uneasy Rider: “I betchya he’s even got a commie flag tacked up on the wall inside of his garage.” I remember when liberals were associated with “commies,” and now, ironically, it’s the other side that’s in bed with the despots who are more aligned with Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un than they are with anyone who remotely resembles the principles upon which this nation was founded.
If all this pisses you off, that’s okay. Here’s your sign. I’m an American, and while I’ve never put my hand on the constitution and taken an oath, I’ll defend it to my death against traitors, “foreign and domestic.” And if you’re dumb enough to think the smarter southern kids you grew up with aren’t exercising their Second Amendment rights, well, you just go on thinking that.
While this might not be my most important point with this post, I’m gonna say it just the same: stay the fuck away from our American outlaw heritage. You’re nothing compared to any of those men (or women) who had the actual balls to stand up for something – for anything – even if they might have been a little misguided in their motives or less prudent in their ways.
You’re no huckleberry… you’re no daisy. You’re just your man’s bitch, and when I look at people like Trump, Ted Cruz, Marjorie Traitor Greene, or any of the spineless crazies who are just playing you, I don’t find a real American outlaw in the bunch.
I just see grifters, snake oil salesmen, and the antithesis of what our founding fathers envisioned for America to become.