You may be too young to recall, but the greatest fight in history occurred in 1974.
“The Rumble in the Jungle” was more noteworthy for the tactic of challenger Muhammad Ali than the result. Ali called it the “rope a dope.” He held his forearms against his body and let George Foreman punch himself out. Ali won in the 8th round.
In the war against Trumpism, Joe Biden is using the same tactic. It requires patience, discipline, and getting hit a lot. But a politics based on always attacking exhausts the attacker. It leaves them open to a counterpunch.
To make the rope a dope work, you must take some hits. Gandhi knew that. Dr. King knew that. People must see the cliff they’re falling into. Not just what the monkeys on Fox News claim, the world organ grinders like Rupert Murdoch are shaping.
It’s feudalism.
Without the protection of law for everyone, all rights become conditional. Without the protection of regulation, there is no safety. Without the hand of government, there is no security.
You’re forced to back up on legal abortion and birth control comes under attack. You’re forced to back up on civil rights and your neighbors are murdered. A demand to fight “cancel culture” becomes censorship. We forget how hard it was for FDR to get Americans into World War II, and how hard it was for Abraham Lincoln to rally them during the Civil War.
Until people see the other side’s end game, they’re reluctant to get involved. Those being brutalized feel abandoned but that’s how wars work.
Stripped of the veneer of civility, politics is just war by other means.
On all the important issues of our time, the right today is wrong. They’re wrong on gays, wrong on women, wrong on minorities, wrong on Russia, wrong on economics, and wrong on education. They know it, which is why they’re desperately punching themselves out.
The margins here are thin, and they vary from place to place. In many places the right can still cobble together a majority and work their will against the people. But you can move people, by demonstrating how extremism, even in the defense of what some may call liberty, becomes a vice, and how moderation in the pursuit of justice is the ultimate virtue.
In this way Joe Biden is the most consequential President of the 21st century.
