I finished this book today. I'm not much into westerns, but despite a slow start it really became a page turner by the end with some phenomenal characters. Now I want to find the 1989 miniseries to see how it holds.

It's been interesting to reflect on the idea of frontier justice and how this may have shaped what America became. When horse thieves are regularly hanged in a quasi-vigilante manner, it quickly weeds out a lot of anti-social people and their tendency to drag the rest of society down.

Unfortunately now it seems like many western countries are not only failing to appropriately manage their anti-social natives, but are also actively importing those from other countries. This seems part state mismanagement but also aided by plenty of suicidal empathy from the masses (WOMEN! or really a toxic femininity). The majority of US citizens disapprove of ICE, and could not be expected to tolerate let alone support something like the public hangings of the wild west.

I'm not black pilled. We'll find a solution. For my part, I hope for a humane one that minimizes violence, but I honestly have a hard time predicting the future these days and am operating mostly in "serenity prayer" mode to "accept what you cannot change, courage to change what you can, and wisdom to know the difference."