Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces captures the truly epic core of Trump’s transformational campaign.

Campbell presented a stunning and comprehensive analysis of the archetypical hero, who has graced religion, mythology, and philosophy and psychology through time.  In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell defines the process the hero undergoes to achieve transformational and great accomplishments on behalf of the tribe, group, or country.

According to Campbell, each hero’s journey goes through formulaic stages.

We first see the hero in his normal world.  Here, Trump is the successful businessman, the larger than life celebrity.  Yet at the edges we see him pulled in another direction – the direction of calling out the failures of our political system and the unintended consequences failed political decisions have wrought.  At times excoriated for his brief encounters with political confrontation, he remains unfazed.

Finally, unable to watch silently anymore, Trump declares that he is going to run for president of the United States of America.  Pushback, mockery, and opposition are immediate and seemingly monolithic.  But as the nomination process marches on, and announced contenders slip away, alliances are formed, and bright political stars coalesce.  Luminaries such as Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, and Newt Gingrich sign on to Trump’s campaign and serve as mentors.

Trump is victorious.  At the end of the nomination process, against all odds and with the defeat of sixteen seasoned candidates, Trump has thrown a collective knockout punch.  Trump’s brand of charisma and chutzpah brought him over the nomination threshold into an unknown arena of the presidential campaign, with rules and values heretofore unknown to him.

To say Trump has been assailed from all sides is an understatement.  The mainstream media, Hollywood, academia, and even members of his own party have vowed to defeat him.  Politicians whom Trump previously supported carried out ugly and vindictive attacks against him.  But others came to his side.  Men such as Walid Phares, Steven Moore, John Bolton, Jon Voight, Mike Huckabee, and vice presidential candidate Mike Pence joined Trump in his epic battle for the presidency.

The outcome of the presidential race is still unknown.  Will Trump be victorious?  Surely, our country will become a better place if he is.  But even if Trump is not successful, he has given us many gifts.  He has exposed the cost in human suffering of our incomprehensible foreign policies, open borders, sanctuary cities, persecution of police, current energy policies, and certain trade agreements.  He has exposed the hypocrisy of the “free press.”  The press is not free.  It is in cahoots with the Democratic Party.  It will be a long time, if ever, before the press is deemed credible.  Trump has exposed the horrific corruption at the Department of State.  Concomitantly, he has exposed the shameful, scary decay at the FBI – and after FBI director James Comey’s latest kabuki act, they still have the temerity to question Trump’s temperament?  He has exposed the inanity of political correctness, “safe spaces,” and victim categories.  He has exposed the failed past half-century’s social policies that have left inner-city schools in shambles and generations of poor without jobs or the adequate education to obtain them.  He has exposed the lie that is Obamacare that really translates into no care.

With unmatched energy, commitment, and courage, Trump has given America the gift of clarity.  He has changed how one sees the world.  Clearly, he belongs in Campbell’s pantheon, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.