In a culture used to the updating of the Western hero to fighter pilots in Star Wars (1977), Top Gun (1986), and Space Cowboys (2000), for example, the link between Bush stepping out of the jet in ...full fighter uniform and the symbolism of the Western hero could not be missed. ...just as Western films have long provided mythic examples of courageous men who subdue vicious outlaws, as in the original 3:10 to Yuma, which could be used to support American policies such as the Cold War, they also have a history that dates at least to the Vietnam War of debunking the myth of the Western hero and the idea of American exceptionalism that the hero carries.
Man in commercial society is sometimes found a detached and solitary being; he has found an object which sets him in competition with his fellow creatures, and he deals with them as he does with his ...cattle and his soil, for the sake of the profits they bring; the mighty engine which we suppose to have formed society, only tends to set its members at variance, or to continue their intercourse after the bonds of affection are broken.1
