Transcript
Commentator or Analyst (0:11)
As Ronald Reagan once said, heroes may not be braver than anyone else, they're just braver five minutes longer. Every so often, I say out loud, trump won. I repeat it in my head a few times, because even now, I barely believe it. Eight long years of conflict, madness, division, corruption. There'd been convictions, jail time, even suicides among the Jan Sixers whose lives were destroyed because they were faithful enough to Trump to have his back when the chips were down. What our government and our media and the ruling class wanted was to terrorize Trump's supporters out of their loyalty to him. It's a cult, they continue to insist. But even after all that, Trump won. He won the Electoral College, and he won the popular vote. There's never been a story like this one in all of American history, and even the good people of the left know that. But there have been stories like this in all of the most beloved films and books. This story is one we all know. It's called the Hero's Journey. And any honest person knows that. We just watched Trump live out his. By the end of it, he has people like me wandering around saying, Trump won. His victory meant more than just winning an election. It meant the return of reality and normalcy. Somehow. I know it sounds crazy to say that, but it's true. Trump refused to stand down no matter what they threw at him. He refused to cower in the face of an assassin's bullet. He soldiered on as the best heroes do, passing every test, humiliating his rivals. And even those who hated Trump can't help but be impressed. One only needs to look at the two covers of Time magazine, which feature Trump as Man of the Year, to see how it started and how it's going. Trump didn't write this story. His enemies did. And in so doing, they sealed their fate to become but a footnote in the unforgettable story of the greatest political comeback in American history.
Steve Bannon (2:26)
I think he's created the most amazing political comeback in American history. The 16 states that tried to take him off the ballot in a first, the two impeachments, the trial as a private citizen, and then, of course, the two assassination attempts. So to be able to overcome all of that and then wage a campaign in which he was outspent two and a half to one, and yet he overcame all of that.
Commentator or Analyst (2:52)
So how did we get here? What is the hero's journey? And how does Trump's story fit so well?
Steve Bannon (2:58)
The hero's journey is an algorithmic pattern of transformation. These patterns are the experiences we must confront when Leaving our comfort zone of our perceived reality. A hero desires a want that is left unfulfilled. He will go through a series of transformative steps to discover a deeper unconscious need for the story to grip us at an emotional level. We must feel empathy with the hero. We relate to, people like us who perceive the same world we do. This doesn't mean the hero must be good, but it's mandatory that he is relatable. Heroes are propelled by universal impulses we can all understand. Everybody desires to be loved and understood. Everybody wants to succeed, survive, be free, take revenge, or fix mistakes and injustices from the past. We feel empathy towards relatable people in a position of injustice in which their perception of reality might be the correct one, yet they are fighting a system that is oppressing them. Most heroes go through an arc of change in which by the end of the story, they are no longer the same person. They might have started being apathetic, arrogant or indecisive. And by the end of the arc, they become active, humble and decisive. Some heroes don't change. Instead, they have control over their own narrative, so they catalyze the rest of the world to change. The world will test their narrative to know how real it is in the physical world. If it fails to meet with reality, then the hero's arc is a tragedy. If the hero's perception of reality is the truth, then the world is no longer a tragedy.
