he other day I came across this quote from Sun Tzu, in his discussion of how to
use energy and chaos strategically:
Amid the confusion, there may be fighting and anarchy, yet no disorder; amid the chaos, there may be disarray, yet no defeat.
‘Disorder’ is born in discipline; ‘fear’ is born in courage; ‘weakness’ is born in strength. Control or disorder depends on numbers; courage or timidity depends on power; strength or weakness depends on disposition (shape) of troops.*
Now, I'd be the last person to suggest that President Trump is deliberately employing the strategies of Sun Tzu. But it strikes me as a pretty good description of what's going on.
Most of us remember how Ronald Reagan was the ‘teflon president.‘ Well, Trump has somehow managed to improve on that: when somebody attacks Trump, it bounces off and hits the attacker right between the eyes.
Back in July, lefty never-Trumper Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post claimed there was a Trump boomerang effect, meaning that whatever Trump tries to do, the opposite happens. Now we know the truth: Trump has an intuitive understanding of how to use chaos and his tremendous, tremendous energy to give his political opponents a broken nose.
For a while it seemed that the only one whacked by the Russia scandal was Mark Zuckerberg, whose Facebook was accused of hosting fake news and selling the Rooskies $100,000 worth of ads. Zuckerberg originally claimed that Facebook was “a platform for all ideas.” The Guardian says that Zuck now sees things Hillary's way. Facebook is to become the platform for some ideas, now that he's discovered the existence of ideas that are not to the Dems' liking.
But do any Facebook users even vote? What did these ads actually say? The news media cite sources who claim to have seen them, but I imagine they probably looked like this:
Announcer: Is now swimwear, very nice . . .
Announcer: This message brought to you by loyal American patriots who are not Russians in any way.
The biggest and most nose-whacked boomerangee of all is, of course, Hillary Clinton, the inventor of the Russia scandal. After all those demonstrations and riots, the Democrats finally not only got a special counsel, but they got the one they wanted, Robert Mueller, who supposedly hates Trump with a passion, and the first thing he discovers is that the Democrats were actually the ones behind all the Russia scandals.
My hat is off to Donald Trump. The man must be a frickin' genius. He had all of us convinced that Mueller was a mad dog. Ann Coulter, his biggest fan, the lady who actually wrote an entire book praising Trump, even threatened to drop her support because he wasn't building a wall.
Suddenly wall prototypes are going up, and nobody seems to care.
Tony Podesta . . . Hillary's Uranium One scandal . . . and most of all, the fake Fusion GPS dossier . . . all are spectacular defeats for those Dems who pinned their hopes on Russia to get rid of their Trump nightmare.
They've had a few victories: the interventionist right took the bait, and the likelihood of a combined antiterrorist action now seems remote.
But even the establishment Never-Trumpers are starting to realize that the Boomerang President is not only a master deal-maker, he seems to have an intuitive grasp of how to use anarchy and chaos to create disorder among his enemies. If Trump has a motto, it might be this:
Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.
* The more popular translation goes like this:
Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all; amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat.
Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline, simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength. Hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is simply a question of subdivision; concealing courage under a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy; masking strength with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions.
This translation is a bit off, and it is excessively verbose, depriving it of its punch and aphoristic style; see the original here.
oct 27, 2017, 6:13 am
