When I was a kid—think “the seventies”—we admired quite a few outlaws. Robin Hood was a favorite, as were the pirates we’d catch in black-and-white reruns when we were lucky enough to find them on our three TV channels. But being American, our greatest heroes came from the Old West, that wild stretch of history between 1850 and 1900.
It wasn’t until I got older and dove into the history of that era that I became familiar with the lawmen. As a boy, the names I knew were Jesse 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 who studies kids raised 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 I’m not encouraging here—but they represented something larger than themselves. They weren’t the rich and privileged; they were common people. They stood against a status quo of robber barons, railroad magnates, and banks. They represented ordinary folk who were finding themselves once again under the thumb of “the man.”
How the mighty have fallen.
Fast-forward to today. I look around me here in Tennessee (GO VOLS!!!) and I see plenty of people who pretend they’re anti-government and that they care about individual rights. I suspect many of them harbor a childhood appreciation for the “outlaw” figure that has persisted throughout their lives. Like those outlaws, they own guns and they’re happy to brag about it.
And yet, I’ve watched these same people be led like cattle through nose-rings, following a political party that hasn’t offered anything in years beyond rhetorical lies. They are following a movement that in no way represents the independent, gun-toting outlaw spirit so many of us grew up pretending to be.
I’m not saying the Old West outlaws were justified in their actions; I wasn’t there and I didn’t walk in their shoes. But as an armchair historian, I’ve learned that the truth is far more complicated than the watered-down version in a school textbook. I see a parallel between today and feudal Europe, where peasants were completely under the thumb of landowners with titles. We’ve allowed that same system to creep back into our lives.
The New Robber Barons
Do you think you own your house? Try going one year without paying your property taxes and find out who really owns the deed. Think you’re free? Sure, you’re free to be homeless, without access to food or medical care—or you can take a job making some billionaire richer while you live paycheck to paycheck. The robber barons didn’t disappear; they just traded their top hats for boardroom suits and software algorithms.
All around me, I see a new breed of wannabe American outlaws. These “tough” men and women pretend they’re strong and standing up to the system… but they are sheep, being led to pens to be milked, shorn, or slaughtered at the whim of their masters. And the tragedy is, they’re utterly oblivious to it.
For all their flaws, Jesse James, Robin Hood, Cole Younger, and Billy the Kid weren’t *led*. They were leaders. They didn’t let someone else tell them what to think; they made their own determinations and stood by them.
Some of us—those outlaw-loving kids of the seventies—grew up to be law-abiding, tax-paying members of society. But we still have that spark within us. We express it with our votes, our words, and our actions, but we’ll never kowtow to a bunch of grifter politicians and billionaires. I cannot respect the politician who puts his hand on a Bible he doesn’t believe in to swear an oath to a Constitution he is actively working to destroy. I cannot stomach the billionaires who could end world hunger with a stroke of a pen, but instead choose to keep you scraping for crumbs while they hoard the loaf.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. An influential sound of my youth was The Charlie Daniels Band; you might remember that line from *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.” Now, ironically, it’s the other side that is in bed with despots like Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un—leaders who are more aligned with authoritarianism than they are with any principle this nation was founded upon.
If all this pisses you off, that’s okay. Here’s your sign. I’m an American, and while I’ve never taken a formal oath of office, I’ll defend the spirit of our Constitution to my death against traitors, “foreign and domestic.” And if you’re dumb enough to think a lot of us “woke libs” aren’t exercising their Second Amendment rights… well, go on and keep thinking that.
But let me be clear: stay the hell away from our American outlaw heritage. You cannot claim the legacy of those men and women who had the actual balls to stand up for something—even if they were misguided or reckless—while you spend your days following a script written for you by a political consultant.
You’re no huckleberry… you’re no daisy. Right now, you’re just a passenger in someone else’s car. When I look at people like Trump, Ted Cruz, or Marjorie Taylor Greene, I don’t see the independent spirit of the American outlaw.
I see grifters and snake oil salesmen. And most of all, I see the antithesis of everything our founding fathers envisioned for America to become.
P.S. This post was written in June of 2024. I mentioned Marjorie Taylor Greene but, in an unexpected twist, she has since resigned her post and started criticizing those who won’t stand up against things that are clearly wrong. Do I have suspicions about her motives? Of course… I have suspicions about everyone’s motives! But judging based on her actions, kudos to her; I hope she keeps it up.
