*This essay was inspired by a phenomenal panel at BasedCon. Thanks, guys!
Americans don’t just admire heroes. We admire a very particular kind of hero — the one who steps up when the system breaks down. The knight-errant serving his king, the soldier loyal to crown and country, the bureaucrat obeying the rulebook: these are not our heroes. They belong to other cultures. The American hero is cut from different cloth.
Our myths celebrate the vigilante, the gunslinger, the masked superhero. He isn’t a lawbreaker for fun, nor an anarchist who delights in chaos. He’s the one who acts when the law fails, when authority is corrupt or cowardly, when no one else will or can. He is a man with a code — a personal compass strong enough to stand against the storm.
But “real American heroes” aren’t just found in novels or on the movie screen. They’re the soldier who lays down his life for his brothers in combat. They’re the firefighter — or pizza delivery guy — who storms a burning building to pull a child out. They’re the first responders, armed or otherwise, who run toward gunfire in an active shooter situation. They are ordinary men and women who do extraordinary things when others can’t or won’t. That’s why the archetype hits so hard — because it mirrors real courage we see on our streets and battlefields every day.
That’s the archetype that has shaped America’s storytelling from the frontier to Gotham City. And that’s the archetype Donald Trump slotted himself into — canny, deliberate, and effective. His critics may not like it, but myth is stronger than polling, and the American mind still thrills to the lone figure who says: “If the sheriff won’t do it, I will.”
Progressivism, by contrast, has come to represent the opposite: the sheriff who lets the bandits ride free, the bureaucrat who insists the town must submit to his rules, the institution that demands obedience instead of protecting the people. In the mythic structure Americans instinctively recognize, progressives have cast themselves as the system — and worse, as the villain the hero must fight.
Let’s trace this out.
Fairy tales from the Old World are filled with kings, knights, saints, and martyrs. Their heroes are almost always defined in relation to authority — serving it, sanctifying it, or suffering under it. But America grew up without kings. On the frontier, authority was distant or corrupt, justice unreliable, and survival often depended on one’s own grit.
That’s why our national myths are peopled with different figures:
Each operates outside the official system, but never outside morality. They are not criminals in the sense of despising order; they are criminals because the law has failed to align with justice. They live by a code — and the audience recognizes that code as their own.
That is the American hero.
The vigilante isn’t chaos in human form. He’s not the Joker, or the outlaw who kills for sport. He’s the man who looks at a broken system and decides he must act — because no one else will. His power doesn’t come from institutions, but from courage, skill, and an unshakable moral code.
This archetype explains why Americans instinctively cheer for the underdog, distrust bureaucracy, and side with the maverick who refuses to bow. It’s also why we tell our stories through the lens of the lone ranger, the caped crusader, the man with no name.
The vigilante is the American hero — and the yardstick against which we measure every other figure in our political and cultural life.
Donald Trump’s political rise makes perfect sense. He presented himself not as a polished senator, nor as a servant of party machinery, but as the lone man willing to fight when “the system” wouldn’t.
Trump also understood that his code was not merely personal but shared. He didn’t invent the values of hard work, loyalty, or hitting back when attacked. He embodied them at a moment when many Americans felt those values had been abandoned by their leaders.
That is why he resonates, even with people who may dislike his style. He tapped into the vigilante archetype — and in America, that figure is always the hero.
Modern progressivism has drifted into the role of the villain in this mythic drama. Not because progressives see themselves that way, but because they have aligned with the wrong side of the archetype. You can almost see the mustache twirling:
This is why progressives, despite immense cultural power in their lock on the media, university, and most institutions, struggle to win hearts outside their base. They imagine themselves as warriors for justice, albeit justice applied to the group rather than the individual. But within the American mythic imagination, they have become the system that the lone hero must resist — the foil, the antihero, often the outright villain.
The power of myth runs deeper than opinion polling or party platforms. Myths are how cultures understand themselves. They explain not just who we are, but who we aspire to be. That’s why Trump’s appeal is not primarily rational or policy-driven. It’s mythic. His persona aligns with the story Americans instinctively understand: when the sheriff won’t act, the lone man with a code steps in.
And it’s why progressivism increasingly grates on the American ear. Its story — of salvation through bureaucracy, of safety through submission, of morality enforced from above — is simply not our myth. It is European, technocratic, collectivist. It is foreign to the frontier spirit and the superhero code.
Every nation has its heroes. In France, it is the revolutionary. In Britain, the stiff-upper-lip officer. In Russia, the suffering soul. America's hero is categorically different. It is the vigilante who acts when no one else will, the man with a code stronger than the law.
Donald Trump didn’t invent that archetype. He stepped into it. Progressives didn’t mean to become its opposite. But by aligning with bureaucracy, coercion, and distrust of the individual, they cast themselves as the very system Americans love to see resisted. In a very real way, they are un-American.
That is why politics today feels less like a debate over policy and more like a clash of myths. And until progressives rediscover the American hero’s code — courage, loyalty, freedom, and true, not social, justice — they will remain the villains in the story America tells about itself.
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy PJ Media's conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth, and enjoy exclusive subscriber benefits as well.
Join PJ Media VIP and use the promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership!