"We can't win the old ballgame unless we have teamwork," said Gary Cooper as John Doe, in the 1941 Frank Capra classic Meet John Doe.  "And that's where every John Doe comes in.  It's up to him to get together with his teammate.  And your teammate, my friends, is the guy next door to you."

Meet the new John Doe.

Donald Trump is not a hardscrabble everyman plucked from on-the-road poverty.  But he does offer the same inspirational quality as the Doe character. 

Trump evokes similarly stirring calls to national pride, to new unity of citizens in common struggles. 

We are Americans.  We don't take orders from foreign interests.  We aren't impressed when overseas politicians curse at us, outraged at the concept of regular Americans actually standing up. 

As the old song advised, "you run your mouth, and I'll run my business, brother!"

Trump events across America are packed by laughing, roaring, defiantly exuberant tens of thousands.  Feeling proud and beholden to no one is liberating. 

It feels good again to be an American.

Fire marshals turn away thousands more who are eager to hear the candidate's rousing message of resurgent national strength and noble aspiration. 

What is evident, given the tremendous nationwide outpouring of feverish grassroots support for the idea of a people-vs.-indifferent-establishment movement, is that the vital spirit of American individuality and independence breathes still.

That spirit is what first raised our nation to global pre-eminence. 

The political status quo didn't make America exceptional.  Nor did its studiously groomed, deceitful toadies in the fake news media. 

We the people did that.  And we can do it again. 

"I am a unifier," Trump once declared. "And I would love to see the Republican Party, and everybody, get together and unify. When we unify, there's nobody — nobody — that's going to beat us!"

In 2022, America has its new John Doe. 

Iowa writer DC Larson counts among freelance credits Daily Caller and Western Journal.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.