John Minford, #SunTzu 10: 1 " There are different forms of terrain:
Accessible terrain,
Entangling terrain,
Deadlock terrain,
Enclosed terrain,
Precipitous terrain,
Distant terrain."
Accessible terrain,
Entangling terrain,
Deadlock terrain,
Enclosed terrain,
Precipitous terrain,
Distant terrain."
Oh my do our translators and commentators go off on today's verse. They all hate it, to a man. Logic. Perfect definitions. Repetitions. False distinctions. Oh, do they attack our master on this one!
You know me, I always use the following assumption, Master Sun may be right, and even if not, even if he doesn't care about be right, he's always informative, instructive, purposeful. And if you skip ahead, you'll find all the definitions. How wonderful.
I say, why don't we try to tease out Master Sun's meaning by our own little logical minds? Let's try! Accessible is of easy access. For the Dems, this is the heart of Coastal Cities. To obstruct them there requires extraordinary courage. It is easily accessible for them.
For us, everywhere else is accessible, easily. Mind, I do NOT believe in giving up the cities! But when it comes to votes, they are not our most accessible places. That's easy to understand. Let's turn to entangling.
We get entangled over helping the weak, as opposed to empowering them to help themselves. We get entangled over tax law, rob the rich, serve the poor...who doesn't want to be Robin Hood? We're entangled over this and it won't be easy to extract ourselves.
We are 100% deadlocked over the Constitution itself. Forget the Democrats. Consider every Republican vote to weaken the Constitution over the past 50 years and more. Consider every Supreme Court Justice we've supported, who then blows up the Constitution.
When I think of Chief Justice Roberts, I want to puke. Where is our response? Where is our attack against him? They've deadlocked us here, and shame on us for letting them. He is an abomination of Constitutional creed. Tell me I'm wrong. You know I'm not.
Where are we enclosed? The list could go on and on. We're enclosed by the 16th and 17th amendments. Worst of all, we're enclosed by our public-school re-education mandate. Sure, we can pay, or homeschool. Or, we can send our children to public schools. Enclosed.
Our precipitous terrain is supporting a President who opposed the anti-Americans wherever they appear. Be it the media, the Democrats in Congress, the Deep State or any other member of the swamp, he opposes them. When we support him, we're on precipitous ground.
Distant terrain is where we've gone too far. I'll give an example. Until we can repeal the 16th Amendment, there will be NO getting rid of direct, unapportioned taxation. Our society is far too far dependent upon direct taxation to agree to wipe it out.
Now, I must ask, how difficult was that? Easy as pie. Master Sun - especially under our translator Minford's deft hand - is always easy to understand. We know that The Way is our ultimate guide, and Heaven's will is our direct mandate. The Earth, ah, that's where the action is.
As we descend into our new chapter 10, we must NOT forget all we've learned in chapter 9. It must be recalled that the chapter divisions are NOT the work of Master Sun. They come from later editors, doing their best to give us the most accessible document they could.
If you study the commentators, you'll find some that consider chapters 9, 10 and 11 all to be parts of a single whole, within the great context of Master Sun's complete guidance. I don't agree, but I deeply appreciate their consideration.
I see chapter 9 to be too dependent on chapter 1 to be its own, separate document. And, as I read forward into chapters 10 & 11, I see the connections to chapter 9, but also to all that came before. I've said this previously. The more I study, the more I believe in Master Sun.
That is, one Master, a real human, who wrote one book, one of the world's greatest classics. I am honored to turn on his every nuanced thought, as I hope you will be too. Here, at the beginning of chapter 10, we have these six terrains.
No, of course they're not the ONLY six, Master Sun gives us other lists of terrains, elsewhere. But these six matter. They count. The only assumption a proper student requires is this. Master Sun many have been right. No matter what else he said that appears to contradict.
If he counts out six here, and nine elsewhere, so what? While we're here, let's just be good students and follow these six. Let's thing them through. Let's learn how to apply them, per his guidance. That's enough for us, don't you agree?
Last point for today. I myself have labeled the six this, or the nine that, as I've walked through my coaching career. We're just talking models here, not reality. We try to model reality in the smallest number of steps we can. But so often, reality laughs back.
No, reality scorns us. Your simplified model is too simple. It's not 6 steps, it's 9. Deal with it. Alas. It isn't easy to teach difficult students like us, 2,300 years later. Master Sun is up to it, though. The only question is, are we?
284 verses completed, 172 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.
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.
