The hard-won hope of the long defeat

Let’s not mince words. It’s a dark time.

If you’re reading this, you feel it. You see federal troops on American streets as a political tool. You see a multi-front assault on our elections. You see the machinery of government — from a supercharged ICE to a weaponized Department of Justice — being wielded against those the regime dislikes. You see courts wavering, Congress cowering, and other institutions choosing accommodation over confrontation. The danger is real, and the exhaustion is profound.

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But it’s not just the individual threats that weigh on us. It’s the sheer volume. The autocrat’s playbook isn’t just about single acts of repression; it’s about creating a dozen crises at once. This is not incompetence; it is a strategy. As strategists from Sun Tzu onward have counseled, stretch an opponent’s defenses, exhaust them, and strike where they are then unprepared. By flooding the zone with outrages, they keep us perpetually reactive, divided, and off-balance. Our attention is their battleground, and they are winning by forcing us to fight on a thousand fronts at once.

The goal of this chaos is twofold. First, to spread us thinly so our responses are less effective. Second, to exhaust us and make the defense of democracy feel so futile that its defenders simply give up. Despair is a political weapon.

I’m not writing to tell you that you’re wrong to feel this way. I’m writing to tell you that this feeling is a designed part of the assault we’re facing. And I’m writing to tell you that we are not the first to stand in this spot, staring into what looks like an abyss. In the history of those who came before us, we can find a map not for a specific strategy but for a resilient mindset.

The long defeat as enduring hope

The phrase “the long defeat” comes from J.R.R. Tolkien, who has Galadriel speak of “fighting the long defeat” in The Lord of the Rings. That evil may never be fully vanquished and therefore that even victories against it are temporary. For Tolkien, a devout Catholic, it carried a tragic but defiant realism: History is a process of entropy, yet the fight for beauty, justice, and truth is still worth waging.

Over time, the idea that even in a period of decline doing the right thing remains a strategic and moral imperative has migrated from literature into political and theological commentary. Dissidents under Soviet rule, activists resisting authoritarianism, and modern democratic leaders have invoked versions of this concept to capture the paradox of resistance. Victory may lie invisibly over some horizon, or may never be final. Setbacks are inevitable, and yet the very act of persevering is itself a form of hope.

To “fight the long defeat” is not to surrender to futility but to locate dignity and meaning in the struggle itself — and to recognize that what feels like defeat in one moment may seed the victories of another. Indeed history is replete with examples.

Lessons from a Polish winter

Consider Poland in the winter of 1981. The vibrant Solidarity movement was met with martial law. (If you don’t know the history of Solidarity, we’re planning to write about it later this week — stay tuned.) Its leaders were jailed; its organization shattered.

The pro-democracy cause appeared utterly defeated by the full weight of a Soviet-backed state.

What did they do when open confrontation became impossible? They didn’t stop. They began a patient, underground campaign — sustained organizing, covert communications, and cultural work that kept civic life alive. They understood that when you cannot win on the state’s terms, you must refuse to let the state define the terms of reality. They focused on keeping the idea of a free Poland alive. Through underground publishing and clandestine lectures — continuing traditions like the “Flying University” — they maintained a shared understanding of truth in the face of a regime dedicated to lies.

For roughly eight years they persisted. They were not just an opposition; they were the custodians of a democratic ideal. When a crack in the regime appeared in 1989 — with the Round Table Talks and semi-free elections — they were ready because they had never surrendered the moral and intellectual foundations of a free society.

Their lesson for us is this: When the machinery of the state is captured, the most critical ground to defend is our shared commitment to truth and democratic values. Doing so is necessary to be ready to seize the opening when it inevitably comes.

Clarity in our own history

We can find a similar lesson in our own history. Think of the lawyers and activists of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and ’60s. They faced a legal and political system built to exclude them. The courts, the police, and the law itself were instruments of a brutal racial hierarchy. Every institution that was supposed to deliver justice was instead architected to deny it.

Their response was not to meet every injustice with a scattered, reactive defense.

It was to maintain an unwavering focus on the core principle at stake: the moral and constitutional bankruptcy of segregation. They possessed profound strategic patience, persistence, and powerful moral clarity. Their fight reminds us that in an environment of institutional failure and constant attack, the most potent weapon is a disciplined focus on the fundamental principles being violated.

But history also shows that change can come with surprising speed. Consider the movement for marriage equality in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 election. Voters approved bans in 11 states that year, amending constitutions to prohibit same-sex marriage, and President George W. Bush — who supported a federal marriage amendment — was reelected. The political consensus was so strong that even in 2008, the Democratic nominee for president recanted his previous support for marriage equality. Yet within just a few years, everything shifted: in 2011 the Obama administration stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court; in 2012 the president endorsed marriage equality; and public opinion moved rapidly until marriage equality was recognized in the Constitution. While we know that victory is now facing its own backlash, that moment is a powerful reminder that political winds can shift with breathtaking speed.

A moment of seeming hopelessness can be the prelude to a breakthrough.

A mindset for a hard moment

The history of these movements does not offer us an easy comfort or a simple to-do list. It offers us a way to think, a framework for how to situate ourselves and endure.

1. Find the signal in the noise — We must resist the autocrat’s strategy of distraction. We cannot respond en masse to every fire. Instead, we must anchor our work in the foundational principles at stake: the rule of law, the integrity of elections, and the ultimate sovereignty of a free people. By focusing on the core pillars of democracy, we refuse to have our attention fragmented and our energy dissipated.

2. Cultivate strategic readiness — This isn’t just about passively enduring a long winter. It is about actively preparing for a change in the weather and doing what we can to bring it about. We cannot ultimately control when the political winds will shift or when an unexpected event will create an opportunity. But we can control our readiness. The work of a hard moment is to get the sails ready. It is the time to lay the legal groundwork, build the coalitions, refine the strategies, and organize the resources. Our task is to be so prepared that when a crack of daylight appears, we are ready to sail through it with maximum force and not be caught scrambling.

3. Uphold a common truth — In an era of rampant disinformation, the simple act of insisting on objective reality is a profound form of resistance. The authoritarian project depends on breaking our collective understanding of facts. By committing ourselves to defending the institutions and norms that discern truth — in journalism, in science, in law — we are defending the very possibility of a self-governing society.

4. Bolster each other — In moments that feel like we’re spiraling backwards, when the forces of unfreedom are on the march, a common tendency is for the forces of freedom to fall into infighting. Rather than gaining strength from each other, our fears and anxieties and anger lead us to turn on each other. But in that reaction are the seeds of ultimate defeat; whereas movements that come together in times of adversity water the seeds of renewal.

There is no question we are being tested — as a country, as a movement, and as individuals.

But we are not the first to have faced such tests and we will not be the last. Many who preceded us faced tests like this and even harder ones, and we have their example to remind us that whatever happens, no matter how dark the night, the world keeps turning and eventually comes the dawn.

Personally, I’m more optimistic than Tolkien. I don’t think human history bends towards decay. I’m partial to Martin Luther King’s vision that it bends towards justice. But what’s powerful about the idea of the long defeat is that it is agnostic about one’s optimism or pessimism — it simply reminds us that the task of being human (or elf) is to do right and to do good and to embrace beauty where we can find it.

And if I can play my small role in lifting you up in this difficult moment, it’s to remind us all to remember that. And to act on it.

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