Scientist exposes anti-wind groups as oil-funded, now they want to silence him

It's a tenet of MAGA membership, culturally reinforced by the likes of Taylor Sheridan productions like 'Landman' - conservative machismo power-fantasies where the environmental strawmen are setup to be 'destroyed' by Billy Bob Thornton in a snappy youtube-shorts length monologue.

Unfortunately, similar to 'Yellowstone', much of the rabid viewing audience take this conservative land-right pornography at face-value as a source of truth for the state of the nation.

Weird: My YouTube feed is suddenly (as of last night) full of “Landman” shorts and I was trying to work out wtf it even is? This makes a lot more sense now, thanks.

Conservatives did something kind of incredible.

I'm in the PNW so I'll use timber and logging as my example but one can find similar stories in coal and oil.

Conservatives used environmental causes as a means to distract workers. What do I mean? Back in the 70s and 80s loggers were looking to unionize and get more pay. So what happened? The spotted owl, land rights, environmentalists, etc. Now we have campaigns like Timber Unity which resulted in more gates on lands, less loggers in general(automation) and lower pay/benefits for those workers.

Now, rural Americans fly banners of campaigns that have stripped them of money. They eagerly proclaim their timber unity while they lose their jobs, acting as if they're battling this environmentalist boogieman.

While the low paid workers hit their chests and declare unity against environmentalists, their employers lower their pay, cut benefits, etc while blaming an owl.

It's mind boggling how hoodwinked they let them selves be. You can see this repeated in other industries that use environmentalists as scapegoats.

You’re basically right. It wasn’t a one-off trick so much as a playbook: take a niche label and stretch it into a catch-all (CRT -> DEI/antiracism) [1], flood the zone so it feels way bigger than it is [2], wrap it in “silent majority” vibes so supporters feel counter-culture [3, 4].

1 - https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1396961964190961665

2 - https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-obsession-cri...

3 - https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/nixon-silent-majority-spee...

4 - https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/05/19/americans-an...

Landman is objectively a bad show. I gave it about 5-6 episodes before giving up. It's so far from Yellowstone, it might as well be in Australia.

I mean Yellowstone started strong and got real bad real quick, so this paints landman in an even worse light.

Maybe watch an Australian TV series such as Mr Inbetween before claiming a Sheridan production would land easy here.

Australia was simply a long distance reference, not a dig at their likes and dislikes.

Sure, even so Landman carries the stink of Abbott's Texas and the attitudes comfortable with forcing redistricting to cook the electoral books . . . there's a space between it and Yellowstone but they're both clearly still in some part of modern USofA.

That aside, Mr Inbetween is far, far away from both, has some appeal for those that like guns, and is worth the watch for the uniqueness and storytelling.