Thread by @ThyConsigliori

John Minford, #SunTzu 4:10 "To foresee the ordinary victory of the common man is no true skill."

Let's do a bit of analysis together. Our translator is a genius, the best there is, in bringing ancient Chinese modes of thought into a comprehensible expression in modern English. It is a phenomenal balancing act. How to make their thought available for our thought.

He's also a practice leader in honor, in honoring his teachers and influences. I love that! We're going to be looking at a bit of the work of one of his greatest influences, Lionel Giles, in just a moment.

I believe he'd be the first to encourage us to analyze his work, to see if he always passes muster, and would expect that he does not. In today's passage, he does not. Please read it again and test it for clear, clean, indisputable logic. I'll turn to something else while you do.

I wasn't sure if there was a word "versification" and just looked it up. There is, but it's not quite what I want. How do we standardize verses, such as we enjoy when studying the Holy Bible or the Koran? Those verses were not there in the original. How did they get there?

Back to our man Giles. He is, to my knowledge, the first to break Master Sun's work down into numbered verses. So, today's passage, in Giles, is verse 4:8, not 4:10. Oh, you can get a free PDF of Giles as his work predates copyrights. You really want to do so!

Before we look at his version of this verse, what's wrong with Minford's logic? To my assessment, it's the term "ordinary victory" and then, compounding by giving that ordinary victory to "the common man." I don't think there really are such things as ordinary victories.

To me, any victory, most especially of "the common man" is worthy of celebration. And what's more, I believe Master Sun would second that emotion. But, what if there are such things as ordinary victories of the common man? Well, then who would care to foresee them, at all?

And maybe that's Minford's intention, but it still feels wrong to me. I try, by reading ahead, to see what's coming and see if that helps me get the logic, and it still feels off to me. Check it out for yourself. Read the next few verses and see where you stand on the logic.

While you do that, I'm going to see what Master Giles has to offer.

Lionel Giles, #SunTzu 4:8 "To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence."

Aha! Now this logic starts to clarify a bit, but wow, these British masters...

The common herd, eh? Okay, we did after all send them packing back over the Atlantic in, what year was that, oh yeah, 1781. Ahem, getting back on track, let's head up to New York, Manhattan, the 1920s or so. When the taxi driver gives you a stock tip, it's time to sell.

Time machine now up to 1943, still in Manhattan, the Chrysler building, on the 60th floor where the executive dining room was, and listen to Peter Drucker and Alfred Sloan discuss how it was time to turn production planning away from the war to the coming victory. True story.

I can assure you that my father in New Guinea or the Philippines at that moment, had NO IDEA that the war's victorious end was already in clear sight, if you were in the dining room in the Chrysler building.

I made my own call for @realDonaldTrump's victory on 9 February 2016, as a result of the New Hampshire primary. It was my last test before I threw down in public and gave my forecast with my usual disclaimer that if wrong, I will publish my failure analysis.

At the time, though, it was merely a personal forecast, based on personal judgement, simply from the perspective of the common man. I had no connections, was not involved, and did NOT base my call on data other than just what I was looking for, myself.

After I became a volunteer analyst to the Trump Campaign, I built a data driven, chart-based analysis, and on that basis, I made the call for the victory - again, this time FROM THE DATA! - on 15 October 2016. I was no longer, at that point, part of the common herd.

In America, to be clear, we are damned PROUD of being a common man. In the election booth, Warren Buffet's vote does NOT count any more than yours or mine. My LEGAL immigrant grandfather's vote counted just the same, one. Yet, there is a point to this verse.

Let's call for "common thinking," or "the common perception." And let's say that that kind of thinking comes from something we'll call "little mind," or "small mind." The warriors of old knew that to win an unforeseeable victory, a different form of thinking would be necessary.

The warriors of old knew that they had to find their own "big mind." They had to rise up, in mind, up to the heavens, up about the ninefold heaven, and see the lay of the land below upon the earth. Seeing the command and discipline of their enemy, they had to find the way.

I put forward that there is no such thing as an ordinary victory of the common man. If you have to fight to win, than your victory matters. You too must replicate the wisdom of the warriors of old. You need to do that for your own personal life. You owe it to yourself.

America needs you. #MAGA can not occur without you. I'll say again, we need roughly 100,000 Sun Tzu qualified small, high-performance MAGA team leaders to blanket America. You must recruit about 8 followers each, too.

Contemplate that, with what big mind you're able.

Please.

To return to previous sections in our #WarForAmerica2020 and #SunTzuForMAGA series, don't forget to head over to @WarForAmerica21.

70 verses completed, 352 to go. And also, be sure to purchase John Minford's translation, here:

amazon.com/Art-War-Pengui…