Which Presidential Election Movie are you projecting?

Americans love movies, and our favorite genre has to be the one where the good guy beats the bad guy. The problem is that we also project (or are manipulated into projecting) these movies right from our minds onto what we call reality. Right now, the movie many of us are watching/projecting about the American election of 2024 has the bad guy winning and no hero.

Let’s take a look at how it works. The basic structure of any movie, but especially superhero movies is this:

• Act 1: we witness a peaceful, loving everyday life, city, world, town, life, and family until a conflict or threat to that everyday life reveals itself and seems to change everything.
• Act 2: The main character or hero comes to grips with the change and the new world and eventually experiences a crisis.
• Act 3: the crisis is resolved, and all is well

So which movie of the American presidential election are you watching?

Well (and this sort of proves it’s a projection), no matter what your political affiliation, you’re likely looking at this on your screen: the American democracy is in crisis due to other people from the other party trying to steal the election led by a bad man who does bad things who wants to be president and must be stopped; our courts and our state officials cannot be trusted to protect us; the survival of our country is at stake; you must, therefore, vote for this other man that is less bad and says better things than the bad man, but that may leave much to be desired as a hero.

Regardless of party, you may have been manipulated into believing that the other party is comprised of entirely bad people who are doing terrible, vile things that are part of a vile international ring. You may also consider your party’s (putative) presidential candidate to be a hero.

It hit me when I recently read an interview with Charlamagne tha God by The New York Times Magazine in which, to illustrate a different point, Charlamagne (who clearly will support President Biden regardless) observed that “Biden lacked main character energy.”

To me, Donald Trump is a villain, but to millions, he is a main character and a hero.* To many, Donald Trump is clearly a villain, but they are still in search of their superhero and don’t find that hero in President Biden.

People have been so desperate for a heroic main character that they’ve even auditioned third-party candidates for the job.

This made me wonder whether there’s another hero or a whole different story we could create in this movie? Why does whoever is the Democratic presidential nominee have to be the hero in order to save the country and world from evil anyway? Couldn’t the hero be the resilience of the U.S. Constitution? Or maybe the American people can be the hero while President Biden is relegated to a supporting role as one of those many old white guys in suits making decisions in the background?

Or, and I think this is really the one, maybe women wearing pussy hats can just take over the plane and fly us straight to a new feminist future?

(of course, that’s exactly what the other picture fears most)

*It is occasionally possible for a villain to be the hero–Tony Soprano or the Joker in the movie Joker spring to mind. In fact, many years ago, The Economist drew a comparison between the Joker and Donald Trump and Joker.