Thread by @ThyConsigliori

John Minford, #SunTzu 7: 22 "Victory belongs to the man who can master the stratagem of the crooked and the straight."

I know I've shared the story, likely many times already, that the man who introduced me to Sun Tzu was Gordon Gecko, which is to say Michael Douglass as written and directed by Oliver Stone. This occurred in the hellacious year of 1987.

Hellacious? Oh my, yes. I wouldn't wish my first years as a self-employed coach (especially since I didn't yet know I was a coach!) on anyone other than my worst enemy. It was horrible. Terrible. Don't make me talk about it, okay? And there was Master Sun laughing at me happily.

Here's what I mean. If ONLY I knew how to listen to Master Sun, and ESPECIALLY to today's verse, I'd be as rich as Tevye dreamed to be in Fiddler On The Roof. Stratagem? Who uses words like that? No client has ever asked me, "Pasquale, can you help me make a good stratagem?"

It's been 32 years now. How many clients? 100s, certainly. 1,000s, surely. More than 5,000, maybe. No matter. Let's use the word "lots." As we'll soon see, the ancient Chinese might count them 9. Basically more than 7, which is lots. Lots of clients over 32 years, yes?

I only now understand, finally, damn it, that EVERY SINGLE CLIENT THAT EVER HIRED ME was stuck in the crooked, not knowing how to make it straight, and needed a proper stratagem by which to do so. This is the ultimate Yin/Yang. The crooked and the straight.

Aha! It's NOT 27-year old me's fault!! It's John Minford's fault. He was still 14 years away from publishing his translation. No other translation could have guided me properly when I was beginning my unwitting coaching career. Relief. At least it's not on me! Ha!

Hey, I'm dangerous now. You may want to head over to my website and contact me soon. The price goes up on Monday. Just tell me what's crooked, and I'll help you build a stratagem to make it straight. 3+ decades in, I'm starting to get kind of good at it.

TheConsigliori.com

I'm just kidding about the price and Monday. I'm not kidding about the service. I had no idea that strategy was the issue back then. But it is. And, it's the issue for the #MAGA movement as well. We Americans are not so strategic in our thinking. We're kind of trapped in tactics.

Here's a direct application we've discussed before as well. The 2018 midterms were crooked for us. We failed to make them straight. State by state, county by county, district by district, we failed to meet, match and master our opponents. We lost the House.

How many times is enough, how many times to look with piercing agony at our failure? That many plus one more. How did we let that happen? And look at how crooked everything is now. If we'd won the House - truly won it, not like the appearance in 2016 - we'd have our wall by now.

We face a crooked world, a crooked America. A rigged system. A corrupted government. And it's on us to correct it. We need the right strategy, the right stratagem. We need to make this right. To right the crooked angles. To correct it. To make it straight. Straight up. Square.

Nationally, we need the House back, and to secure the Oval Office. We need to strengthen #MAGA in the Senate. 60 #MAGA votes. Imagine that. At the state level what do we need? We need red states back, obviously. We need true #MAGA Representatives and Senators in each district.

We need so much more. We need to employ all 10 tenets of the #MAGA platform that @realDonaldTrump gave us applied in every nook and cranny of our nation. I'll post them again, below. It will be a crooked path we walk in straightening out each of these objectives.

1. Remember The Forgotten Americans
2. Rule Of Law
3. American Jobs
4. Quality Of Life For Every American
5. Heal Our Cities
6. Build The Wall
7. Make America Wealthy Again
8. Make America Strong Again
9. Make America Safe Again
10. Make America Great Again

Allow me just one crooked path made straight by a simple stratagem. Let's imagine your district is pure red. You voted for @POTUS. You have a Red Senator and a Red Congressman. In your district, Trump is supported. Okay, what now? How about a Build The Wall initiative?

What if you identified a tiny percentage of your district's budget to be turned over to the Homeland Security Department to be employed in paying for the wall? You could then win national media coverage for this tiny investment. How much of America actually wants the wall?

Imagine every single red county that voted for Trump in 2016 ended up following suit, and got laws on the books stipulating so in advance of the 2020 run? Could it happen? Probably not. But we'll never make anything happen if we think that way. Turn the crooked straight.

What about you yourself? How crooked is your identity as a Trump supporter? You've found yourself silent when you wanted to speak. You've lost business, friends and even family over it. You have paid prices you never dreamed could even be princes. How crooked is that?

I say it was worth it. We defeated Crooked Hillary and that was one of the greatest turning points, away from the crooked and toward the straight, in all of American history. We have hardly felt it yet, but that was a moment of pure joy, true goodness. We did it. You did it.

How does Master Sun guide us to make the crooked straight? He does so on every page, in every verse. But he most importantly lays it out in his first list, 1: 2.

He gives us:

1) The Way
2) Heaven
3) Earth
4) Command
5) Discipline

By studying the way, looking to the heavens, rooting into earth, building command and discipline, we too can make the crooked straight wherever we turn. Battle by battle, we can discover the strategy we need to guide our tactics intelligently.

That is what our founders did. That is what the Union did when finally freeing the slaves. That is what the greatest generation did when defeating Hitler and Hirohito. That is what @POTUS did in defeating ISIS. And it is what we must do in 2020 and beyond.

175 verses completed, 247 to go.

To return to previous sections in our #WarForAmerica2020 and #SunTzuForMAGA series, don't forget to head over to @WarForAmerica21. You'll find the digital table of contents for this series, there. Please retweet each entry you enjoy.