The war on ranchers and cowboys is bigger than the "Roundup" of the Bundys and their supporters at the Bundy Ranch.
The cowboy and rancher personality of the late 19th century and early 20th century is interesting because his personality traits contrast more and more with those of people in the U.S. after about 1960 and, even more so, in 2016. Many of the traits of the cowboy were just the opposite of those of many Americans now. He was too much of an individualist and too self-sufficient to be tolerated in the America of 2016.
Transformational Marxism, the Counter Culture and the Me Generation mindset all made the Baby Boomers less individualist and self-sufficient and more collectivist than the parents of the Baby Boomers.
When the parents of the Baby Boomers were growing up, from about 1915 through about 1950, many more Americans lived on the land out in the country or in very small villages. There were two Parent
Generations of the Baby Boomers, the World War II people and the Korean War people. Now the U.S. is much more urbanized, with an urban outlook dominant. The urban outlook is dominant in the churches. Hence a negative attitude toward ranchers and cowboys who are rural, too independent and "different."
Walter Prescott Webb claimed that the great distances and sparse population of the West encouraged self-reliance. (The Great Planes, 1931, p. 246.)
Webb also said of the settler and cowboy on the great planes that "When he made that perfect adaptation he departed farther and farther from the conventional pattern of men, and as he diverged from the conventional pattern he became more and more unusual: He made a better copy for news-writers, artist and cartoonist" (The Great Planes, 1931, p. 245).
In many states on the Great Planes now, the independent rancher who grows range fed beef and his cowboy laborers are being phased out by a society and government hostile to their independent and self-reliant and sometimes eccentric ways. Corporate owned pen feeding of cattle for consumption is the replacement for the organic range fed beef of the independent rancher and cowboy.
"Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by." "Under Ben Bulben" by William Butler Yeats