{"id":160237,"date":"2025-03-22T22:40:32","date_gmt":"2025-03-23T06:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=160237"},"modified":"2025-03-23T03:03:14","modified_gmt":"2025-03-23T11:03:14","slug":"taylor-sheridans-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=160237","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Sheridan’s Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rick Marin writes for Commentary Magazine<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\n

The Anti-Woke King of Hollywood Lets Loose<\/p>\n

Taylor Sheridan\u2019s shows explain how and why we got Trump again<\/p>\n

It’s not often that a TV show not only nails the zeitgeist but anticipates it\u2014that zeitgeist being the election of Donald Trump and concomitant rebuke of the Democratic political-cultural agenda. Make that TV shows, plural, all from the ridiculously prolific keyboard of Taylor Sheridan. His massive hit Yellowstone spawned two prequels\u20141883 and 1923\u2014and five more series: Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Lawmen: Bass Reeves, Lioness, and, most recently, Landman. He did all of this in six years, after writing an Oscar-nominated script for a Texas bank-robber movie called Hell or High Water in 2016. If Sheridan told his patron studio, Paramount, that he wanted to do a show about paint drying, they\u2019d find a way to air it. And back up a Brink\u2019s truck to his Texas ranch for the privilege.<\/p>\n

Such is the 54-year-old writer-director-producer\u2019s Midas touch with \u201cflyover country\u201d\u2014as New York and Hollywood have long dismissed their red-state viewership. Even more remarkable is how this unfettered clout is manifesting itself in his writing. He offered confusingly mixed political messages in the first couple of years of Yellowstone\u2014though not so mixed that its audience didn\u2019t immediately understand what he was trying to say and make the show the biggest hit on television, despite airing on the Paramount Network, which you had to search high and low for in your cable package. Now his mix of cultural conservatism, libertarian\/Jeffersonian objection to federal overreach, and muscular foreign policy is fully out of the closet. Consider two typical Sheridan monologues.<\/p>\n

The first is from Landman, a soapy-actiony drama that premiered in November 2024 and that\u2019s set against the fracking-fueled West Texas oil boom. Billy Bob Thornton plays Tommy Norris, a roughneck fixer \u201clandman\u201d for a fictional wildcatting outfit called M-Tex. The company\u2019s snarky young lawyer is surprised when Tommy tells her they use wind farms\u2014what she calls \u201cclean energy\u201d\u2014to power pumps so remote that they\u2019re off the grid. He claps back, \u201cThey use alternative energy. There\u2019s nothing clean about this.\u201d She throws him a Zillennial eye roll: \u201cPlease, Mr. Oilman, tell me how wind is bad for the environment.\u201d So he does\u2014with impassioned, profane eloquence\u2014as they stand under a towering 400-foot wind turbine that stands on a concrete pad that covers a third of an acre and sits 12 feet deep.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you have any idea how much diesel they have to burn to mix that much concrete?\u201d Tommy schools her. \u201cOr make that steel? And haul this s\u2014t out here and put it together with a 450-foot crane? You wanna take a guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that f\u2014n\u2019 thing? Or winterize it? In its 20-year lifespan, it won\u2019t offset the carbon footprint of makin\u2019 it. And don\u2019t get me started on solar panels or the lithium in your Tesla battery. And never mind the fact that if the whole world decided to go electric tomorrow, we don\u2019t have the transmission lines to get the electricity to the cities. It\u2019d take 30 years if we started tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

He isn\u2019t done: \u201cAnd unfortunately for your grandkids, we have a 120-year-old petroleum-based infrastructure. Our whole lives depend on it. Hell, it\u2019s in everything. That road we came in on. The wheels on every car ever made, including yours. It\u2019s in ten-nis rackets and lipstick and refrigerators and antihistamines. Pretty much anything plastic. Your cellphone case, artificial heart valves, any kinda clothin\u2019 that\u2019s not made of animal or plant fibers. Soap, f\u2014n\u2019 hand lotion, garbage bags, fishin\u2019 boats\u2014you name it. Every f\u2014n\u2019 thang. And you know what the kicker is? We\u2019re gonna run out of it before we find its replacement\u2026. Getting oil outta the ground is the most dangerous job in the world. We don\u2019t do it because we like it. We do it \u2019cuz we run outta options\u2026. There ain\u2019t nobody to blame but the demand that we keep pumpin\u2019 it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The clip went viral (Ted Cruz reposted it on X), so vivid is it as an indictment of the hypocrisies of \u201cgreen\u201d energy. The kicker is the lawyer\u2019s sudden terror at the sight of a rattlesnake at her feet. Tommy advises her to get the hell away from it, but she freezes. He has to fetch a shovel from his pickup and cut the rattler\u2019s head off before this damn fool city girl gets herself bit. An act of rugged chivalry that bookends their meet-cute in a bar the day before, when he asks the bartender to get a club soda for \u201cthe lady\u201d and she language-polices him:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d prefer if you didn\u2019t refer to me as \u2018the lady.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Tommy feigns surprise: \u201cOh, did I guess wrong? I\u2019m so sorry, sir. And hats off to the plastic surgeon that shaved that Adam\u2019s apple.\u201d<\/p>\n

You could call this sexist or transphobic or whatever, and plenty of reviewers have, but sexism is a tricky xcharge to level against Sheridan. The women in his fictional universe may be alluring objects of the male gaze, but these pant-suited hard-asses are seldom the weaker sex. Kelly Reilly\u2019s Beth Dutton in Yellowstone throws as mean a punch as any male Montanan, especially since Kevin Costner\u2019s John Dutton exited the series. Helen Mirren as Cara Dutton in 1923 is as flinty and unflappable as her husband, Jacob (an ur-flinty Harrison Ford). And Lioness is built around a CIA program that trains and deploys ruthless female \u201coperators.\u201d It stars Zo\u00eb Salda\u00f1a as Joe McNamara, who can out-alpha any of her team\u2019s hulking \u201cgray men\u201d (ex\u2013Special Forces contractors) and thinks nothing of ripping them a new one if they get out of line. Oh, and that smug lawyer who got scared by the snake? She\u2019s as lethal as any diamondback when it comes to defending Tommy in a liability lawsuit. \u201cYou think I got this job because I\u2019m pretty?\u201d she sneers, after absolutely demolishing her male opponents in a deposition.<\/p>\n

Is that sexist? Or, to paraphrase Nigel Tufnel in Spinal Tap, is it sexy?<\/p>\n

The second season of Lioness also has Sheridan flying his freak flag, which is basically a big ol\u2019 Stars and Stripes. China is the \u201cbig bad,\u201d having contracted a Mexican drug cartel to carry out a provocative geopolitical gambit, kidnapping a congresswoman (and murdering her family) to force us to retaliate on Mexican soil, robbing us of moral high ground vis-\u00e0-vis Taiwan. As the show\u2019s deputy CIA director explains to the secretary of state:<\/p>\n

\u201cChina is Mexico\u2019s No. 1 trade partner in crude oil natural gases as well as gold. So any military response to this on Mexican soil renders our opposition to a move into Taiwan as hypocritical to both NATO and the UN. And with Russia chairing the Security Council, China has free rein for a Taiwanese invasion with little or no consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

The secretary of state, by the way, is Morgan Freeman. Nicole Kidman is also in the Situation Room. Sheridan\u2019s casts are an embarrassment of A-listers (Jon Hamm and Demi Moore are supporting players in Landman). Proof that his critics may not understand on what side their bread is buttered but the actors, or their handlers, certainly do.<\/p>\n

The war games in Lioness have the whiff of Deep State paranoia, as if all the world\u2019s affairs are decided by five people in a badly lit room. As do the scenes with Kidman (who plays Zo\u00eb Salda\u00f1a\u2019s CIA boss) and her husband, a master-of-the-universe money man who issues cryptic, portentous advice at the breakfast table. \u201cTake a look at Mexican exports,\u201d he mumbles from behind his laptop. \u201cParticularly oil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Give Sheridan credit for breaking down sophisticated concepts, even boring ones, and giving them dramatic urgency. In the opening scene of Landman, Tommy explains the difference between surface and mineral rights. Yawn, you may think. But no, because he does it with a burlap bag on his head while cartel enforcers beat the crap out of him. Spoiler alert: Tommy wins the argument. He\u2019s seen worse. His ex-wife\u2014a blonde bombshell timed to blow up every time she shows up in his life\u2014is more dangerous than any sicario.<\/p>\n

Another hot take is what Sheridan sees as the woke degradation of the American military: \u201cThe Army does sensitivity training now. When I served, there was none of that sh-t. There was no bathroom of the gender you decide you are today or any of that bulls\u2014t\u2026. Women and fags and f\u2014ing ladyboys and dykes. That\u2019s our Army now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sounds like something out of Pete Hegseth\u2019s book The War on Warriors. But what makes this speech so unexpected is that Sheridan puts it in the mouth of a Mexican-American money launderer. The money launderer\u2019s daughter, a member of the Lioness squad, has been tasked with turning her father on his cartel-boss brother. Her cover is a fake dishonorable discharge from the Army, news that precipitates his rant. Which it turns out is just a warm-up for a peroration on the decline and fall of the American empire. Like Tommy\u2019s soliloquy in Landman, it bears quoting in full:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first sign an empire is failing is when its people question the institutions the empire was built on. The structure of government, the churches, the schools. They reject God because the emperors believe they are God. And the people become so rich, everyone believes they are an emperor as well. And too good to do the jobs that built the empire in the first place. So they outsource those jobs. And they open their borders to allow people desperate to do all the other jobs the other people are too rich to do. Then comes the guilt for all this wealth. But still the empire thrives. And now everyone questions their wealth. Then they question themselves. And then they reject everything that built the empire to begin with. They destroy their own symbols, attack themselves like a cancer, attack the people who protect the empire, attack you for protecting it. Then the wolves come. And all the people who lived like emperors will know the suffering they blamed themselves for creating. And they will be slaughtered. And a new empire will rise from its ashes. Then the cycle begins again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Agree with Sheridan\u2019s doomsday prognostication or not, it\u2019s a pretty articulate summary of similar warnings offered by Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Douglas Murray about the West\u2019s complacency in the face of Islamic fundamentalism. But again, Sheridan doesn\u2019t rely on his actor Demi\u00e1n Castro\u2019s charisma to carry the day. The tension underneath the scene comes from the fact that this criminal holding forth in his Dallas mansion doesn\u2019t know his daughter is there to make him a stooge of the CIA. And she doesn\u2019t know if she\u2019s up to the task of turning her beloved father. One of Sheridan\u2019s gifts\u2014and they are manifold\u2014is his ability to get out his worldview through unlikely messengers caught in undeniably compelling circumstances.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Grok says: <\/p>\n

\nTaylor Sheridan\u2019s politics, as reflected in his shows, are a slippery beast\u2014hard to pin down and often misinterpreted by fans and critics alike. He\u2019s the guy behind Yellowstone, 1883, 1923, Landman, Lioness, and a slew of others, and his work dances across ideological lines in a way that keeps people arguing. Is he a conservative cowboy whisperer or a sly progressive in boots? Let\u2019s break it down through his creations.
\nStart with Yellowstone. It\u2019s a sprawling neo-Western about the Dutton family fighting to hold onto their Montana ranch against developers, Native Americans, and government overreach. On the surface, it\u2019s got red-state bait: rugged individualism, distrust of bureaucrats, and a love for land over progress. John Dutton (Kevin Costner) growls lines like, \u201cThis is America\u2014we don\u2019t share land here,\u201d which vibes with a certain anti-establishment, property-rights crowd. The show\u2019s pro-rancher slant and disdain for corporate suits can feel like a love letter to flyover country. No wonder it\u2019s a hit with viewers who\u2019d rather watch Fox News than HBO\u2014Season 5\u2019s finale pulled 11 million viewers, per Paramount, a series high.
\nBut Sheridan himself scoffs at the \u201cred-state Game of Thrones\u201d label. In a 2022 Atlantic interview, he said, \u201cThe show\u2019s talking about the displacement of Native Americans and the way Native American women were treated and about corporate greed and the gentrification of the West, and land-grabbing. That\u2019s a red-state show?\u201d He\u2019s got a point. The Duttons aren\u2019t heroes\u2014they\u2019re flawed, often ruthless, clinging to a legacy built on stolen land. The neighboring Broken Rock Reservation gets real screen time, with characters like Thomas Rainwater pushing back against historical erasure. It\u2019s not exactly Trump rally material when you\u2019ve got scenes mourning Native suffering or exposing corporate vultures.
\nThen there\u2019s 1883 and 1923, prequels digging deeper into America\u2019s messy past. 1883 follows settlers trekking west, showing the grit but also the cost\u2014immigrants die, Native tribes get screwed, and the \u201cheroic\u201d cowboy myth takes a beating. 1923 goes harder: Teonna Rainwater\u2019s arc is a gut-punch, enduring rape and beatings at a boarding school run by sadistic nuns. She kills one with a sack of Bibles, whispering, \u201cKnow it is the land that is killing you.\u201d It\u2019s anti-colonial rage, raw and unapologetic\u2014stuff that\u2019d make a progressive nod approvingly. Sheridan\u2019s not shy about showing the ugly underbelly of Manifest Destiny.
\nShift to Landman, his 2024 oil-boom drama. Billy Bob Thornton\u2019s Tommy Norris is a fixer for wildcatters in West Texas, navigating cartels, regulators, and corporate greed. It\u2019s got a libertarian streak\u2014big government\u2019s a hassle, and roughnecks are the real MVPs\u2014but Sheridan doesn\u2019t glorify the oil barons. They\u2019re often the villains, screwing over the little guy. He respects the workers, not the suits, which tracks with his broader skepticism of unchecked power, whether it\u2019s Washington or Wall Street.
\nLioness leans into foreign policy, and here\u2019s where it gets spicy. Zoe Salda\u00f1a\u2019s a CIA operative in a shadowy program, and Season 2\u2019s finale has Morgan Freeman\u2019s Secretary of State lamenting endless wars: \u201cWhat makes me sick is how little will change.\u201d It\u2019s anti-interventionist, skeptical of the military-industrial complex\u2014sentiments you\u2019d hear from both MAGA isolationists and AOC-style progressives. Yet Sheridan reveres the grunts, the patriots who follow orders despite the futility. He\u2019s not anti-military; he\u2019s anti-mission creep.
\nHis politics aren\u2019t a monolith. On Joe Rogan\u2019s podcast in 2023, he called COVID vaccine mandates \u201cOrwellian\u201d and ripped into critics who judge art through a woke lens, saying they\u2019ll prop up a bad movie if it fits their agenda. That\u2019s a conservative culture-war flex. But he\u2019s also bashed capitalism\u2019s excesses\u2014on Rogan, he and Joe critiqued its impact on the average Joe\u2014and reportedly said in 2017, \u201cCan we just impeach that motherfucker right now?\u201d about Trump (he later denied it). He\u2019s anti-woke but not knee-jerk right-wing; anti-corporate but not socialist.
\nWhat ties it all together? Sheridan\u2019s obsessed with authority and purpose. His characters\u2014cowboys, soldiers, oilmen\u2014know their place, even if it\u2019s brutal. In Yellowstone, it\u2019s family, tribe, land. In Lioness, it\u2019s duty, however flawed. He told The Atlantic he wants to reach people losing ranches, not preach privilege to them. His shows valorize those who do the work, not those who make the rules. That\u2019s why both red-staters and blue-staters claim him\u2014he\u2019s less about ideology and more about vibe: gritty, unpolished, and pissed off at power.
\nSo, his politics? A mashup\u2014libertarian leanings, a soft spot for the underdog, and a middle finger to elites, all wrapped in a moral lens that\u2019s more about survival than party lines. His shows don\u2019t spoon-feed answers; they just show the fight. <\/p>\n

Rick Marin\u2019s essay, \u201cThe Anti-Woke King of Hollywood Lets Loose,\u201d published in Commentary Magazine on January 14, 2025, dives into the phenomenon of Taylor Sheridan, the writer-director-producer behind hits like Yellowstone, Landman, and Lioness. Marin paints Sheridan as a Hollywood outlier\u2014a red-state champion who\u2019s turned TV into a gritty, anti-establishment playground, raking in viewers and cash while thumbing his nose at progressive sensibilities. The piece is a mix of cultural analysis, fanboy enthusiasm, and political framing, but it\u2019s not without its stumbles. Let\u2019s break it down.
\nStrengths
\nMarin nails Sheridan\u2019s cultural heft. He\u2019s right that Sheridan\u2019s tapped into something primal\u2014his shows dominate ratings (Yellowstone Season 5 finale hit 11 million viewers, per Paramount) and resonate with an audience Hollywood often ignores. The essay highlights Sheridan\u2019s insane work ethic: six years, eight series, countless scripts, all while buying a 266,000-acre Texas ranch. That\u2019s a compelling hook\u2014Sheridan as the cowboy auteur who out-hustles the coastal elites.
\nThe piece also smartly ties Sheridan\u2019s rise to a broader zeitgeist, pegging it to Trump\u2019s 2024 re-election and a \u201crebuke of the Democratic political-cultural agenda.\u201d Marin\u2019s got data to back the vibe: Yellowstone and its spin-offs (1883, 1923) consistently pull massive numbers despite airing on niche platforms like Paramount Network. He\u2019s onto something when he calls Sheridan a voice for \u201cflyover country,\u201d a demographic that\u2019s fueled his Midas touch.
\nMarin\u2019s best insight is Sheridan\u2019s knack for digestible complexity. Take Landman\u2019s opening: explaining surface vs. mineral rights while Billy Bob Thornton\u2019s character gets pummeled by cartel goons. It\u2019s a vivid example of Sheridan\u2019s style\u2014high stakes, no preaching, just raw storytelling that hooks you before you realize you\u2019re learning something.
\nWeaknesses
\nThe essay\u2019s big flaw is its obsession with the \u201canti-woke\u201d label. Marin slaps it on Sheridan like a bumper sticker, but the evidence is shaky. He cites Sheridan\u2019s disdain for military \u201csensitivity training\u201d and woke culture (Landman\u2019s Tommy railing against \u201cbathroom of the gender you decide you are today\u201d), but that\u2019s just one thread in a bigger tapestry. Sheridan\u2019s own words\u2014dismissing the \u201cred-state Game of Thrones\u201d tag in a 2022 Atlantic interview\u2014undercut Marin\u2019s thesis. The guy\u2019s shows tackle Native displacement (Yellowstone), corporate greed (Landman), and futile wars (Lioness), stuff that doesn\u2019t neatly fit a conservative box. Marin cherry-picks to fit his narrative, ignoring how Sheridan\u2019s anti-interventionism or respect for workers could just as easily vibe with progressives.
\nThe tone\u2019s another issue. Marin\u2019s gushing\u2014\u201cIf Sheridan told Paramount he wanted to do a show about paint drying, they\u2019d air it\u201d\u2014crosses into hype-man territory. It\u2019s less critique, more cheerleading. He name-drops A-listers (Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren) and big budgets (half a billion a year from Paramount) but doesn\u2019t interrogate Sheridan\u2019s actual output. Are these shows good beyond their ratings? Marin sidesteps flaws like Lioness\u2019s thin plots or Yellowstone\u2019s soap-opera drift, leaving the piece feeling one-sided.
\nThere\u2019s also a whiff of projection. Marin frames Sheridan as Trump\u2019s TV prophet, but Sheridan\u2019s denied partisan leanings (on Rogan in 2023, he called vaccine mandates \u201cOrwellian\u201d yet bashed corporate excess too). The essay\u2019s political lens\u2014complete with a \u201cStars and Stripes\u201d flag-waving bit about Lioness\u2014feels forced, like Marin\u2019s trying to claim Sheridan for the right when the man\u2019s more of a contrarian than a crusader.
\nCritique
\nMarin\u2019s got a solid grasp of Sheridan\u2019s appeal\u2014grit, scale, and a middle finger to Hollywood norms\u2014but he overplays the \u201canti-woke\u201d card. The essay would\u2019ve been sharper if it wrestled with Sheridan\u2019s contradictions: his reverence for ranchers and soldiers alongside his critiques of power, his mass-market success despite niche themes. Instead, it\u2019s too busy crowning him a culture-war kingpin. Data like viewership stats (e.g., Bridgerton\u2019s 37 million vs. Yellowstone\u2019s 11 million) could\u2019ve grounded the hype, showing Sheridan\u2019s dominance isn\u2019t universal but still impressive.
\nThe prose is punchy\u2014\u201cMidas touch with flyover country\u201d sticks\u2014but it lacks depth. Marin doesn\u2019t critique Sheridan\u2019s art, just celebrates his swagger. A tighter focus on one show, say 1923\u2019s brutal Teonna arc, could\u2019ve shown how Sheridan\u2019s \u201canti-woke\u201d edge coexists with progressive undertones, making the argument more nuanced.
\nVerdict
\nIt\u2019s a fun read if you\u2019re a Sheridan stan or a Commentary reader who loves a good liberal-bashing yarn. But as analysis, it\u2019s uneven\u2014strong on vibe, weak on rigor. Marin captures Sheridan\u2019s moment but misses his complexity, settling for a partisan victory lap when a deeper dive could\u2019ve hit harder. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Taylor Sheridan is suspicious of our institutions, no? He’s a populist like Trump.<\/p>\n

\nYeah, Taylor Sheridan\u2019s got a deep suspicion of institutions running through his work\u2014it\u2019s practically his signature. Whether it\u2019s government, corporations, or even the military brass, he\u2019s consistently skeptical of the systems that claim to keep society humming. And you\u2019re right to spot a populist streak in there, one that echoes Trump\u2019s \u201cdrain the swamp\u201d vibe, though Sheridan\u2019s take is less about rallying a mob and more about showing the little guy getting crushed or fighting back.
\nLook at Yellowstone. The Duttons are battling a triple threat: federal regulators sniffing around their land, corporate developers trying to turn Montana into a playground for the rich, and a tribal council with its own beef. The institutions\u2014be it the EPA, big business, or even the reservation\u2019s bureaucracy\u2014aren\u2019t saviors; they\u2019re obstacles or outright predators. John Dutton\u2019s a flawed kingpin, but he\u2019s framed as a man defending his way of life against faceless suits and rules he didn\u2019t write. That\u2019s populist fuel: the rugged everyman (or every-family) versus the elite machine.
\nIn Landman, it\u2019s the oil game. Billy Bob Thornton\u2019s Tommy Norris is a fixer for roughnecks, stuck between cartel violence, corporate greed, and government red tape. The oil companies are the real villains\u2014screwing over workers while raking in billions\u2014and the feds are just a nuisance, slowing down the guys who actually get shit done. Sheridan\u2019s not subtle about who he respects: the wildcatters and laborers, not the boardroom or the Capitol. It\u2019s a classic populist split\u2014power to the people who sweat, not the ones who sign the checks.
\nLioness takes it to the national security state. The CIA\u2019s a mess of half-baked missions and moral rot, with Zoe Salda\u00f1a\u2019s character caught in the grind of a war on terror that never ends. Morgan Freeman\u2019s Secretary of State drops a line in Season 2\u2019s finale\u2014\u201cWhat makes me sick is how little will change\u201d\u2014that\u2019s pure institutional cynicism. Sheridan\u2019s not anti-soldier (he loves the grunts), but he\u2019s got no patience for the Pentagon\u2019s endless-war racket. That\u2019s a page from Trump\u2019s playbook too: bashing the \u201cdeep state\u201d while waving the flag.
\nEven 1923 digs into it. The boarding school nuns abusing Teonna Rainwater aren\u2019t just evil\u2014they\u2019re tools of a system (church and state) hellbent on erasing Native identity. When she fights back, it\u2019s a one-woman revolt against institutional power, not just personal vengeance. Sheridan\u2019s saying these structures don\u2019t just fail\u2014they actively destroy.
\nThe Trump parallel fits because both tap into a distrust of centralized authority\u2014government, media, big money\u2014and pitch it to an audience that feels ignored. Sheridan\u2019s heroes are outsiders or holdouts: ranchers, oilmen, operatives who play by their own rules. Like Trump\u2019s rhetoric, it\u2019s less about policy fixes and more about vibe\u2014sticking it to the man. Sheridan\u2019s not stumping for votes, though; he\u2019s just showing the fight, often with a bleak edge Trump\u2019s bombast skips. On Rogan in 2023, he railed against vaccine mandates and woke critics, but he\u2019s also ripped capitalism\u2019s toll on the average Joe\u2014populism with a wider lens.
\nSo, yeah, he\u2019s suspicious as hell of institutions, and that populist thread\u2019s real\u2014less \u201cMake America Great Again,\u201d more \u201cLeave Me the Hell Alone.\u201d But he\u2019s not Trump\u2019s twin; he\u2019s too busy dissecting the wreckage to promise a golden age.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rick Marin writes for Commentary Magazine: The Anti-Woke King of Hollywood Lets Loose Taylor Sheridan\u2019s shows explain how and why we got Trump again It’s not often that a TV show not only nails the zeitgeist but anticipates it\u2014that zeitgeist … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42993],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-taylor-sheridan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t