Around 1998 I hung out at the Sevastopol, a legendary Russian bar in Bremen. Unfortunately it's not around anymore. I drank with Herr Kappen of the GfG and he asked me what the trend of the new Millennium what be. "Western", I said. "We're gonna have a new type of Western based on the old idea of the american frontier which has gotten more and more mobile over the years."

He didn't know what I was talking about, but then again his job was creating good design and not studying the subtext of popular trash-culture, I guess. So, I told him about Buffalo Bill and how the Western-myth is the ultimate sort of revisionism.

"Ours is a moving frontier," James Hall wrote in his "Tales of the Border" in 1835 and that's all you need to know about the foreign politics of the US.

It's sad since the ethics of the Western hero obviously do not work in the real world. What about Afghanistan? Who's dealing with the nuclear nightmare?

"Cards on the tale", "dead or alive" and all that shit Bush says when he should be practicing diplomacy....
He's too childish to realize that the UN is a new experiment for mankind. People decided we were done with the middle-ages after WWII. We wanted to talk about things first now. But that might be hard to understand if you believe that buying a gun means independence.

It's interesting how the US-gouvernment relates to the Western-myth all the time. All these caricatures like Ashcroft, Cheney and Rumsfeld trying to appear like tough gunmen who know better what's right or wrong than all the Eastern aka. European Greenhorns.

Kurt Vonnegut called them "the C-students" in an interview over at In These Times. But it would be foolish to underestimate these master of illusion though. All that forged material which is supposed to prove that Iraq has something to do with the events of 9-11 reinforces what John Ford once said about his Western-movies: "It not the way it was, it's the way it ought to be."

"This is the West. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." -the publisher of a newspaper in "The man who shot Liberty Valance"

Now, the image of the Gunslinger of the Wild West has been replaced by what Richard Goldstein calls the Neo-Macho Man who comes straight out of action-movies starring Bruce Willis, Steven Seagul and all their neoconservative friends. But it's still the same old bullshit.

-Uncle Sam's Other War: Biotech vs. the European Union by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero at alternet.org

The US refuse to label their genetically altered food since they're afraid it would make the goods look like they are some sort of soylent green. Yes, that's why the EU wants you guys to label your damned Butterfingers! We don't wanna eat plastic!

-Some nice old Model Rocketry Ads from the age of the new frontier over here.