Andrew Bacevich, Expanding War, Contracting Meaning (also via Fabius Maximus; and he links to this article by James Bowman, Hollywood's Hero Deficit -- "The Wild West has been resurrected not as a story of taming the wilderness, both external and internal, on behalf of decency and civilization, but as a convenient synecdoche for that dark, amoral, and timelessly violent world that all art worthy of the name today must presuppose. Where there is no hope of a better world, there can be little to distinguish heroes from villains.").