Sunday, Oct. 23, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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I was told not to write this.
By both my wife and my daughter. For different reasons — mostly generational.
But I can’t help myself. I have to write about “The Rifleman.”
Their two reasons are probably true: most people alive haven’t heard of “The Rifleman” and those who have — who know it because they watched it in their childhood many, many decades ago — have convinced themselves that black and white television with simplistic themes and too many cowboys is not something they should have to watch again.
I get it. But still, I find myself watching the re-runs of re-runs and enjoying them. Let me tell you why.
I have been in a constant state of disbelief the past few years because I don’t recognize my country, my countrymen, my friends and their friends and, generally, the American public. I should think that many Americans are in the same boat.
“The Rifleman” has been a half-hour nostalgic refuge for me (actually it’s about 24 minutes if you add in the commercial breaks) because it provides a glimpse back in time — my childhood to be exact — when life and its challenges seemed so much simpler, though in reality it wasn’t and they weren’t.
What was simple, though, was the message. Just in case you all aren’t rushing to your TV sets to see what I am talking about, I will be the spoiler.
Lucas McCain was a single father in the Wild West who was raising his young son, Mark, at a time when gunmen ran rampant in the streets and gun deaths were a daily occurrence. Sadly, not much has changed in that regard.
Lucas did his best to teach young Mark right from wrong at a time when being wrong often proved fatal and being right was just a way to get to a more moral tomorrow.
But for Mark, who always questioned his father’s advice, being right or making the right decisions was a significant step in his maturation process as he managed to grow up in the rough and tumble days when law and order was scarce and long life was even scarcer.
I yearn for those simpler days when it was much easier to tell the good guys from the bad ones. I miss the days when people who understood what was right and what was wrong, almost always opted for doing what was right and rarely ever rationalized their way into a knowingly bad decision.
Those days ended just a few years ago. And ever since 2016, most Americans have been trying to return to the way life used to be, even though many of those people refuse to acknowledge their part in our collective fall from the grace of goodness in America.
As we approach the 2020 midterm elections, many of the same themes that drove multiple seasons of “The Rifleman” are driving the messages that are inundating our psyches nonstop. And people are having difficulty understanding what is true and what isn’t, what is real and what is fake, what is moral and ethical and what is not.
And they are at a loss.
There is no other way to explain why people who support, aid and abet the continuing lies to the American people about what happened when Donald Trump’s cult tried to violently overthrow this democracy we cherish, are very close to being elected to high offices across this country.
There is no other way to explain why voters who just a few years ago would have recoiled against an Adam Laxalt or a Joe Lombardo or a Jim Marchant and so many others for what they are doing today, are embracing them. Those politicians are telling the voters that our elections were and are fraudulent; that Trump was a great president while ignoring that he is extremely close to indictment, infamy or both; and that the people who killed policemen at the United States Capitol were just a bunch of tourists out for a stroll. And Americans, Nevadans, are today considering voting for them.
That’s why I watch “The Rifleman,” and why everyone else should. We need a refresher course in learning and understanding right from wrong. Recognizing the good guys from the bad. And realizing that our bad decisions have even worse consequences.
Yes, life was simpler then and we watched it in black and white. And while most of our decisions these days are not as simple and not as clearly delineated as they once were, they should still be grounded in truth.
And they are not. And we keep falling for the charade.
Where is Chuck Connors when this country needs him?
Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.
