Yellowstone's supposed right-wing bias made me reluctant to watch it, so this is interesting:
'[to] accusations that Yellowstone and its spinoffs are aimed at Republicans, Sheridan responded incredulously. “The show’s talking about the displacement of Native Americans and the way Native American women were treated, and about corporate greed and the gentrification of the West, and land-grabbing. That’s a red-state show?” On those rare occasions when he has discussed his politics, it is clear enough that Sheridan—who infamously referred to Trump as “that motherfucker” in 2017, calling for [Trump's impeachment—seems to view his work as an ongoing critique of structural racism, misogyny, and the economic status quo. [...]
[...] Sheridan’s world offers something that the mainstream American left and the mainstream American right each sorely lack: a positive conception of human purpose that is tethered to an equally coherent conception of authority. Sheridan’s protagonists are [...] frequently unethical, and invariably tribalistic. [...]
For both the Duttons and the shows’ Indigenous characters, there are only a few meaningful sources of obligation and authority: the tribe, the family, and the land. [...] the duties themselves—and the authority they stem from—are almost never in question. And it is here, in its valorization of authority, that we might locate the key to the pan-political enthusiasm for the Yellowstone universe.
[...] what both [left and right in the US] share is a conception of freedom [...] called “negative liberty.” [...] the absence of constraints on one’s behavior. [...]
[...] Negative liberty places a heavy burden on the modern individual, who must decide for themselves who they are, what they want, and how they should live. It is this burden that characters in the Yellowstone universe[...] do not have to shoulder, precisely because they are immersed in meaningful communities that provide ready-made answers to these questions. [...]
[...] defined by their submission to a worthy authority: [...] what’s good for the cattle [slaughtering them is obviously very good for them] and what’s good for the land; [...] the familial duty that cannot be shirked. The heroes in this world are faced with endless physical hardships, but they are spared the hardship of uncertainty, indecision, or insecurity about their identity.
[...] a prevailing political culture—on both sides of the aisle—that is (often rightly) so busy worrying about what we need
freedom from that it rarely stops to ask what makes a free life worth living in the first place.'
Yellowstone, 1923, 1883: Why everyone keeps fighting over these shows' politics.
... my conclusion is that I'm still going to put it far back on my 'to (maybe) watch eventually' list because I don't like its politics (if it were great enough art I might watch it regardless, but I doubt it is...).