The Biden Campaign's Kung Fu Comic Book Strategy

That's totally-maybe-probably gonna work.

The Immortal Iron Fist, art by David Aja. Storyline referenced below from The Immortal Iron Fist: The Seven Capital Cities of Heaven by writer Matt Fraction, artist David Aja plus other artists.

Cassidy Steele Dale forecasts and contextualizes the present to equip us to make a better, kinder future…

… and one of those ways to tell you to believe in kung fu.

Sometimes comic books can accomplish what other forms of storytelling can’t. Because comic books aren’t subject to the constraints of literary flair, computer imaging technology, or budget. Want to tell a great story about kung fu warriors set in secret mystical cities hidden in a pocket dimension in the Himalayas? Sure, why not? If you can write it and you can draw it, you can create an epic for the ages.

So there’s this comic book storyline from maybe 15 years ago that I cannot stop thinking about in the car in the mornings on the way to work.

Because I think it explains the Biden campaign’s entire strategy. Because holy crap, I cannot discern that they’re attempting to do any-damn-thing else.

In short, the Biden’s campaign is counting on Trump to bury himself all year and is counting on Americans to show up to the ballot booth to not just defeat him but to repudiate him — and repudiate Trumpism. And while terrified liberals have been hoping for the past nearly four years for some part of the system to prevent Trump from running again (and while everything has failed) I think the Biden campaign absolutely wants him to make it to Election Day — politically maimed by his own hand — so Biden (and America) can punch through the clouds and into the clear.

And maybe that’s a strategy. And maybe it’s a good one. Or maybe it’s just a political and liberal-Hollywood-culture pipe dream. Because it relies on faith in Americans that maybe no one should have.

Every fearful liberal I’ve talked to — when I’ve mentioned this idea — has screamed, spun around three times, and thrown their noses down into the floor corner and cried. And feared that another Trump win will finally and permanently validate their fears that America never was what they hoped and believed it was and that they’d always been wrong about America and that the WORLD had always been wrong about America and that there is no light in the dark.

And when I say on top of THAT Don’t worry, I think maybe the Biden campaign got this strategy from an old kung fu comic book, those liberals’ eyes go wide, they scream OH. MY. GOD. and shove their noses deeper into that corner and then start digging with their fingernails hoping to get deep enough to hit magma and thus achieve the sweet release of death.

And when I say on top of YET-THAT that No, wait, I think that comic book strategy is totally-maybe-probably gonna work they dig faster hoping the magma will kill me.

So I’m gonna spoil a kung fu comic book story for you now — and maybe spoil the future — so here we go. Here’s the story that won’t let me go:

Marvel Comics — back during the kung fu craze of the 1970s — created a character now referred to as The Immortal Iron Fist.

Long ago billionaire-child-heir Danny Rand was orphaned in a blizzard in the Himalayas and just then a portal to a mystical kung fu city (a portal that only opens once every ten years) happens to open and the monks rescue him and over the course of two decades they train him in kung fu, he defeats an immortal Chinese dragon in single combat and thus is granted martial arts superpowers, and he becomes the champion of K’un L’un, one of the “Seven Capital Cities of Heaven.” Danny Rand, the latest in a line of “Immortal Iron Fist”s, then returns to New York City to protect K’un L’un — and, you know, Earth — from threats from without.

He literally kicks literal ass, is kung-fu-spiritually-advanced, unendingly brave, tenacious, and honorable — and a bit of a dolt.

Later, a few years ago, another billionaire stages a hostile takeover of Rand Industries to get Rand’s maglev train technology and Rand’s secret corporate knowledge of the Seven Capital Cities of Heaven in order to destroy it. The billionaire Bad Guy has a cosmic drill and plans to bore open the only-once-per-decade portal into K’un L’un because the Seven Capital Cities are merged for an otherworldly kung fu tournament. So he can power-speed a maglev train filled with explosives through the portal to kill all seven cities and everyone in them while they think they’re safely in their pocket dimension with the portal-opening still years away.

To thwart this dastardly plan, Iron Fist crams himself back through a small artificial, manmade backdoor portal that Rand Industries figured out how to make. Upon his return he finds himself registered in the tournament against impossible opponents, his home city ruled by a tyrant, and with no allies and no one heeding his warning that all seven cities face an existential explosive-detonation-everyone-will-die threat from just outside.

He only has to defeat Fat Cobra, The Bride of Nine Spiders, Dog Brother #1, Tiger’s Beautiful Daughter, The Prince of Orphans, and The Steel Serpent in the tournament, launch a revolution within the Seven Cities to overthrow the tyrant, re-earn his heritage and title, and inspire everyone to unite against a powerful billionaire with a cutting-edge maglev train packed with explosives and evil.

And he fails and fails and fails and then he fails even harder.

And his half-robot-martial-arts girlfriend and his superpowered best friend fail to beat the billionaire’s mercenary army from the outside and wind up in handcuffs.

And the running joke? “Nothing strikes fear into me like the words Danny Rand has a plan.”

And he fails and he fails until he doesn’t. At the very. last. minute.

And the Bad Guy succeeds. He drills open the portal at the unnatural non-once-a-decade time. To kill them all. He sees the cities coming into view. His train is ready and it’s a giant bomb. He knows he’s Won Everything.

Until Misty, Iron Fist’s girlfriend says:

And there stands The Immortal Iron Fist, the other champions of heaven, and their united kung fu army, and he says…

And then there’s epic, cosmic whipassery. Not just to defeat the Bad Guy but as a warning to Any-and-Everyone-Else Ever Again Who Might Even Try.

So.

Today.

There’s this billionaire, see…

And there’s the Democrats. And nothing on heaven or Earth strikes fear into the hearts of liberals the world over like the words The Democrats have a plan.

The Biden campaign wants Trump to politically survive all the way up to November to drill a cosmic hole into American heaven to stand for election.

And to reach the brink of Winning Everything.

Only to discover that Americans were lying in wait all along.

Waiting, trapped all this time behind a portal that only opens once every four years — waiting with gritted teeth through all the failures and the trials and the non-trials and all the failures and all the failures and all the failures and all the wrongs done and the broken hopes — for Election Day so they can get out and fight him themselves. With pens. At the ballot box. Because they know that they are not the system and that instead they themselves, given the chance, will not fail. Not just to politically break him and send him away. But to repudiate him. And everything he stands for. Forevermore.

So, if you haven’t caught on by now:

We are the plan.

And I think we know kung fu.