John Minford, #SunTzu 9: 49 "In war, numbers are not the issue."
50) "It is a question of not attacking too aggressively. Concentrate your strength, assess your army, and win the confidence of your men: that is enough."
As you may have noticed before, there are random times when our translator's "versing" decisions stump me a bit. Today's verse is just such. Interestingly, Minford visually ties these two verses together, but still uses the indentation method of separating them.
I really do find that fantastically interesting. Consider. Verse 50 is rather easy to follow and fits perfectly with everything we've learned so far. Yet 49 is simply incongruous at first. As I meditated on that this morning, I came to completely agree with Minford's decision.
Before we dive into the initially incongruous 49, a word of 50 is required. And more, a quick foray both toward tomorrow's work and our various commentators and other translators, especially my beloved Giles. So first, check out this lovely book!
I discovered my copy at Costco, for a great price. I wasn't too impressed with it at first, but since I've been writing these commentaries, it has become one of my daily go-to sources. Oh, and here is a free PDF for you of Giles with commentary:
idph.com.br/conteudos/eboo…
Studying 49, I didn't get much from the commentators. But, when I turned to 50, especially in Giles, it simply blossomed for me. I can hardly wait to work on it with you tomorrow! And with Giles help, then returning to 49, it finally popped, I got it, and got Minford's reasoning.
Here it is. In war, a small force can defeat a large force. This has been shown throughout all of history. If you doubt this, check out Agincourt. A simple search will get you the story, and it's a story well worth knowing. So in war, numbers are not the issue!
By so subtly FORCING us to look at this verse separately, Minford offers us the opportunity to release ourselves from brute force thinking. Let's look at Trump through this lens. Who had more money - money is a number - to spend on the campaign, Jeb! or Trump?
And in the General Election, who had a better ground game, more campaign offices and teams, and more Get Out The Vote volunteers, etc.; HRC or Trump? And obviously, who had more media support, more biased "truth brokers"? Obviously HRC did.
Hell, who had virtually ALL the polls and pollsters and analysts and the entire infrastructure of "scientific" research? The list of numbers that favored HRC go on and on. And yet, Trump won. 2016 was our Agincourt. In war, numbers are not the issue.
To steal just a bit of tomorrow's lesson, what is the issue? In two ideas: strategy, and concentration of force. Let's apply that to our 2020 MAGA challenge. Let's assume that the popular vote will go to the other side, again, as it did for HRC.
That is NOT my prediction, but rather our hypothetical right now. Working within the bounds of our Electoral College, we can and in this scenario absolutely must win with smaller numbers, properly placed by strategy, and intensified by a concentration of force. Intensified?
Let's talk for a moment about my great friend @ShariWassell and her work. She has dedicated herself to assessing every contest necessary for 2020 victory, all the way down to districts. And she'll tell you, some districts are more important than others.
If we concentrate on those districts, we get an outsized result. Another term for this is leverage. A small, but well organized, unified, and well targeted force can create ongoing ripple effects that lead to victory. Do you see? Strategy and Concentration of Force. Yes?
I now have to offer some of my own original work on topic. The only way to build such small, concentrated, strategically led teams, is to build Command and Discipline among leader and followers in each unit. My work focuses on Leadership and Followership.
If you're interested, I offer a 4-step journey, a set of tools if you will, completely free of charge or obligation, at my basic website. I have constructed it to be useful for my clients in business, but equally so for our MAGA mission.
Please allow me to assure you, I place no barrier of any sort to the use of these extraordinary tools, which have taken me a lifetime to create. They're bigger than me, and vastly bigger than my small coaching practice. I claim boldly that Master Sun smiles upon my tools.
I merely ask that if you use them, please acknowledge my effort as their creator, and send anyone who should learn their use to my website. Nothing else is requested. Finally then, on today's verse. Release yourself from any assumptions regarding numbers.
We are - and always have been, at least for the past 2,300 years - a primarily tactical creature, we humans. Strategy, like building a stable bridge, does not happen automatically. Master Sun's term for the way we build strategy is "time in the temple."
When you walk into your temple of strategic planning, you can't forget about numbers, but you must always remember today's verse. In war, numbers are not the issue. Destroy your assumptions. Build strategy to concentrate your force.
277 verses completed, 179 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.
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