That's an interesting contrast, in that the Wild West is a halfway house for Civil War burnouts and the Matrix is a deliberately and expensively constructed and maintained, largely successfully hyperreal simulacrum of what the Wachowskis were astute enough in its own historical moment to recognize as the highwater mark of American hegemony. Oh, it's parasitic, certainly; before it was smoothed over for mass appeal it was I think a story much more obviously inspired by They Live. But a cow can live a long and happy life on a farm, and still end up as cutlets. How unjust can we honestly call that deal?

For you and me, the gunslinger's life has a decided appeal, sure. If that and Buy-n-Large World are the only two options on the table - which so far they have been, though I agree the real answer is to add a better third - can we really say the Matrix isn't the less worse of the two?