(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party or candidate, on the part of Newsmax.)
From our earliest beginnings to our senior years, stories have a way of capturing our attention, touching our hearts, and lingering in our minds long after the tale has ended.
We simply never outgrow our "tell me a story" yearning.
Embedded within so many stories from history, literature, and mythology is an enduring figure, the hero.
Renowned psychiatrist and founder of analytic psychology Carl Jung placed the hero figure under the umbrella of the archetype of the collective unconscious.
Archetypes surface from the collective unconscious and enter our conscious minds as mythological characters.
Images of larger than life personas take root within our thoughts, experiences, and memories.
Hero figures that are bona fide archetypes actually have the potential to influence our perceptions. Examples include real life military and sports heroes and fictional comic book superheroes.
Recently, former President Donald Trump was catapulted to hero status, when after being shot during an attempted assassination, he stood tall, pumped his fist in the air, and uttered the unparalleled words "Fight, fight, fight!"
In an instant, he became the archetype.
Everyone could see how compelling a moment it was, including the former president’s political opponents.
Democrats and their complicit media were well aware that something needed to be done to slow the momentum, reverse the narrative, and ultimately prohibit the continuance of his hero archetype status.
Initially, the response of the former president’s opponents was scattered and unfocused.
Big Tech attempted to censor the iconic photo of his blood-streaked face, and social media influencers tried to change the narrative of the assassination attempt.
Nothing seemed to be working.
That’s when President Joe Biden was encouraged to hand over the governing reins to Vice President Kamala Harris, which he did quite swiftly and without using the correct protocols or going through the proper channels.
Still, there was another extremely important task that had to be accomplished.
The vice president’s highly damaged image had to be remade.
And more importantly, she had to have the appearance of having risen to the level of archetype herself, one that could stand toe to toe with the authentic hero status of Donald J. Trump.
Handlers went to work on giving the Biden administration’s social media accounts an extreme make-over.
The Biden TikTok account’s name was changed to Kamala HQ, memes began to be posted by GenX influencers, and there was a focus shift to online discourse and pop culture.
Handlers also made sure that the vice president avoided holding any formal press conferences or making appearances in venues, during which challenging questions might be asked.
A campaign rally was held, which used Megan Thee Stallion’s performance to draw a significantly larger audience than the vice president had previously been attracting.
Her far-left positions on key issues, such as the banning of fracking, confiscation of guns, outlawing of private health insurance, decriminalization of border crossings, defunding of police, abolishing ICE, and promoting the Green New Deal were scrubbed from the internet, and more palatable positions were substituted in.
Her ranking as the "most liberal" member of the U.S. Senate by GovTrack in 2019 was stripped from the web.
The news was adorned with fluff pieces about her collection of cookbooks, family life, etc., and somehow her grating laugh was recast as "joyful" and "charismatic."
But they still weren’t finished crafting the fake archetype of their preferred presidential pick.
Despite the existence of extensive video footage and news reporting to the contrary, there was a flat-out denial that the vice president had been tasked with the job of securing the border, insisting that she had never been assigned to that position.
All this having been said, the Democrats and their allies in the media have two huge problems: The hero archetype in any story has to be believable, and real hero status has to be earned.
You can never fake being a genuine hero.
James Hirsen, J.D., M.A., in media psychology, is a New York Times best-selling author, media analyst, and law professor. Visit Newsmax TV Hollywood. Read James Hirsen's Reports — More Here.