Thread by @ThyConsigliori

John Minford, #SunTzu 9: 22 "Beasts startled are a sign of ambush."

Zhang Yu helps again: "Surprise attacks are usually launched from some precipitous height or out of dense undergrowth, and this startles the creatures lying hidden there into sudden movement."

Do you ever lose your sources, just can't find them again, and get driven crazy over it? No? I do, frequently. I once read - some damned where - about a meeting of startled NeverTrump Republicans right after Ted Cruz conceded the race to Trump, but before the convention.

There was an amazing quote. One of these beasts said to the others, as I recall, "How is he ever going to win the election, all he has are votes?" At first it just made no sense to me. Then, I realized, he was talking about power, influence, connections, coalitions, etc.

I'm sure he was talking about ground game, state and local organization, get-out-the vote efforts and all that too. But he really meant inside the beltway connections, such as himself of course. The same thing is true about all the beasts who've been fired from the WH.

They arrive and believe they've arrived, and believe they deserve to have arrived, and think they're smarter than Trump, and think they're there to teach him the real way to do things, and unthinkingly, I'm sure, to impart their wisdom and values to him.

Trump gives them plenty of latitude. He approves of dissenting opinions and robust debate. But as their heads swell and swell, they're always shocked when Trump makes it clear that the decisions are his, by his values. They never work to learn his values.

Leaving the WH, they squeal like stuck pigs. In these cases, Trump never sets an ambush. Rather, he just lets it be known, there is a values conflict and then fires them. But they are absolutely startled, no question about that.

When it came to the 2016 election, Trump ambushed everyone. He did it in plain sight though. He knew how to speak to the people. It's as if no one ever thought of that before. That's not true, especially in his early days, Obama was very good at it, as was Bill Clinton.

Yet there was clearly something utterly different about Trump. The way I put it back then was that he invented political free speech. You can speak freely, and still get elected @POTUS. Amazing. Shocking. Startling. It really is, no kidding.

@POTUS You walk into the office at work. People quickly look away, uncomfortable, startled. Unwitting, you head over to your desk but before you can get started working your boss appears out of nowhere and tells you he needs to speak to you in his office. You are ambushed.

@POTUS Now go back to Master Sun's specific example. You're leading your troops in the dense forest, and you see a racoon go running past, followed by a skunk and then some deer. Your silly enemy allowed them to be startled by his attempts to ambush you.

@POTUS A wise enemy would clear the forest where he wants to ambush you of all animals so as to not startle them or alert you when you come. Why are any armies, any generals so lackadaisical, so sloppy? But far worse are the generals who don't even notice startled animals fleeing.

@POTUS In this, as in so many of the coming verses, Master Sun lays down the mandate of cause and effect analysis. Yet he's always going backward. Here's the effect, he tells, here's the cause. Again, and again he pounds this home. As a professional business coach, I think I know why.

@POTUS The busier you are tactically, the less time you find for big picture thinking. Cause and effect is always a big picture question. It is inherently strategic. It gets worse. If you teach someone that this is a cause, and it leads to that effect, they'll follow.

@POTUS Cause and effect also occur in linear time, flowing as time always does, forward. Cause first, effect second. But, to analyze an invisible cause in the past in order to understand a very visible outcome in the present calls for a totally different order of thinking.

@POTUS Not only does this break the natural flow of time forward, forcing us to look backward to the past, it requires a truly spectacular act of mind to find, I emphasize, an INVISIBLE cause of a very visible effect. To find the invisible behind the visible is a profound act of mind.

@POTUS Strategic as the mode of thinking is, and it very much is, its master leads to an extraordinary form of tactical wisdom. Oh, I see this effect happening before my eyes. Aha. I know what causes that! So, nope, we're not walking into this ambush boys. We're retreating right now.

@POTUS Out of the infinite tactics available, there are just four that are most fundamental:

1) Forward
2) Right Flank
3) Left Flank
4) Retreat

When you know the cause, and you know the terrain, you can always determine your tactics by the information and the signs.

@POTUS That's enough for today. I can't urge too strongly, though, please read this entire chapter yourself. We'll continue to carefully, methodically explore Master Sun's counsel within each verse. But it will help you greatly to get a sense of the whole message.

Do your homework!

@POTUS 249 verses completed, 189 to go.

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