Trump is a metaphor for the Natural Man…the instinctive man who relies on his gut instead of authorities. This is the American Mythic man who comes in from the wilderness, having lived on his gut instinct, to restore balance to the elite, cultivated, image man of civilization. Remember the movie Crocodile Dundee. Here was a gut man from Australia…All our action heroes are gut heroes. They are free from the calculating mind, free from the conditioned mind, free from political correctness….Trump is a metaphor for this mythic man, what we sense is our True Nature.
This myth of the Original Man first appeared in France, the Romantic hero. It runs through our American culture like an underground steam. It is the myth of the Old South, the heroic general on a horse who wins battle on natural instinct, who doesn’t fear to trust his gut.
Trump is the Romantic Hero who trusts his gut, his instincts, and asks us to trust them too. Trust me, he says. I cannot lose. Ii don’t mean to jump the rails here, but Hitler was a Romantic Hero also who believed he was infallible. Trump is the American Crocodile Dundee.
So in this way, Trump is the triumph of nature over civilization. I can’t help but say the Hitler also captivated his nation by being this mythic Gut Man…who could do no wrong. If you don’t see the fallible man in the myth, we are going to be led astray.
Trump is where reality and myth come together like two rivers; one objective, the other subjective. One is factual; the other is a story one must believe in. One is uncertain; the other is certain. One meanders over the land of history, the other goes in a straight line to the other shore.
Myth always trumps facts, to the frustration of the Factual Man, the Evidence Man. Scientific Materialism is build on the foundation of evidence. Myth uses evidence to creates its myth by selecting the facts it need as building blocks and rejecting those that don’t fit.
All Western Hero’s (The American Hero Myth) are Romantic heroes who follow their gut, and always trust it. Our modern action heroes are also Romantic heroes. They always thwart the plans of the Evil Doers because their instinct (James Bond) reduces them at the nick of time. The world is their friend because it offers them just the right tool when they are in a fix…like MacGyver.
Archetypes is another word for mythic figures. Trump is the archetype of the True Man who comes in to save the day, the natural man that is not dependent upon civilization. He can live on his own, self reliant. This is the American Archetype. This mythic hero comes dressed in the clothes of his times. Trump is the Empire Builder myth. The man who is bigger than everyone else, Taller, longer, smarter, wealthier…..But we suspect he brags too much…hinting that he is really terrified of being exposed as hollow…just a big mythic image…a projection on the national screen. So he has to keep throwing energy into the projector so it doesn’t flicker.
My wide lens goes all the way to the Romantic backlash to the empirical materialism of the Enlightenment. English Literature has the category of the Romantic Period. When I studied it then my lens was very narrow, but now it is wide. Empirical materialism is a reality based on facts and evidence, which leads to an evolving truth of reality. Romantic reality is based in Story and selects the facts to support the story, discarding or dismissing the facts that don’t fit.
These are two dimension of the brain actually. In childhood we live in the story brain. The factual brain is an overlay. The factual brain is always in a certain uncertainty when new facts are discovered that don’t fit the current reality. This brain depends upon uncertainty to advance reality, from uncertainty to certainty. So there is a certain bull in anxiety in this brain.
The Romantic Brain is subjective first and objective latter, so it begins with the Story, and uses facts to support it, like random stars support the picture of a donkey. The image trumps empirical dots. The story gives coherence and certainty to reality and removes that anxiety of the Empirical mind.
As a Romantic Hero Trump comes to remove the anxiety of the modern empirical age where uncertainty is now rampant. In other words, Trump comes to remove the fear of death, which is at the base of anxiety.
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