Know Thine Enemy
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles."
The left has constructed a battle plan going forward that is a perfect fit for their ideology. Their generals assure the troops that it will lead to victory over their enemies because it maximizes their strengths.
They are assured of total, righteous, and permanent victory!
The first obvious flaw in their "perfect" plan is that they have created a plan for an enemy that doesn't exist.
Well, it is not that the enemy doesn't exist, it is that the enemy they believe exists does not, in fact, exist. They believe we suffer the same delusions as they do, just focused on our beliefs.
We don’t.
Sun Tzu said:
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
I'm not going to link to Salon because I can't be responsible for unleashing such stupidity on you, but what follows are some excerpts from a large collection of words posted yesterday by someone called Chauncy Devega, a senior writer at Salon who is clearly off his meds, or more likely is self-medicating with something off-label.
Have a look at how Mr. Devega describes the UltraMAGA threat:
"Seven or so years on, what does MAGA mean now? And what have Trump and his movement accomplished? By any humane, reasonable or moral standards, nothing worth doing, or in any way "great." They pushed American democracy to the brink of chaos. They normalized right-wing political violence, culminating (for now) in the Jan 6 coup attempt and attack on the Capitol. They strove to reverse the civil rights and human rights progress of the 20th and 21st centuries in America.
They elevated conspiracism, anti-intellectualism, a rejection of empirical reality and science, Christian nationalism, white supremacy, misogyny and hostile sexism, and a total disregard for the rule of law. America's global reputation as an "indispensable nation" and the world's greatest democracy (which was already damaged) was permanently stained by the Age of Trump. At least a million people died in America because of how the Trump regime and the Republican Party willfully sabotaged public health and relief efforts in response to the COVID pandemic."
Could the left be any more clueless about the enemy they face?
Psychopaths and sociopaths create a reality in which they are right and everybody else is wrong. I'm not saying Salon employs a bunch of psychopaths and sociopaths, but Mr. Devega did write this post, so you make your own call.
In truth, I'm not sure I want them to know who we really are because they have created a Quixotic quest for themselves, a madness of sorts that has no cure. They have crafted a plan because it fits their desires alone and ignores the strengths of their enemies by redefining their enemies as something they are not. Their plan bends reality to fit a cocksure notion of their superiority.
Need more evidence of their delusion?
Here you go:
“America is not the same country and people it was six years ago in a myriad of other ways as well. Joe Biden's administration has made great strides against the pandemic, and has shown leadership on a maddeningly difficult set of international challenges, including the Ukraine war. Biden and other leading Democrats are finally speaking in a bold and direct way about the danger to American democracy represented by the "MAGA Republicans," to use the president's term.
For the first time in his life, Donald Trump may face serious consequences for blatant defiance of the law regarding the Espionage Act and classified documents. Public opinion polls suggest that Trump is still the likely Republican presidential nominee in 2024, if he chooses to run. But his support is softening among more "mainstream" conservatives and independents.
Many more Americans are at last waking up to the existential danger of the fascist MAGA movement. It is now at least possible that Democrats will hold one or possibly both houses of Congress, something that seemed inconceivable a few months ago.”
Really?
As Sun Tzu would say, they know neither themselves nor their enemies.
Credited to a German military strategist named Helmuth von Moltke is this truism:
"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."
Even with the best intel and the most carefully constructed plan, the enemy still gets a say in how things go.
The only way to lose is to become who your enemy thinks you are, something the GOP has consistently done since the 60’s. Of course, there have been brief periods of time when the GOP actually stood firm and won, but unfortunately, those times come and go.
I have a real problem that the GOP isn’t standing against the shameful treatment of the J6 protesters which features show trials and mandated struggle sessions.
I have a real problem with the GOP agreeing to become a piggy bank for Ukraine as they continue to vote for profligate and unsustainable spending and debt.
I have a real problem with the way they ignore the unconstitutional acts of the Biden Administration, with so few taking public stands against them.
I have a problem with the tacit acceptance of the attacks on the Supreme Court’s legitimacy and the threats to individual justices and that they were met with whimpers rather than strength.
I can get why the Democrats have concocted the plan they have - with enemies like the establishment GOP, who needs friends?
Thanks to a Democrat Party that has finally devolved into total incompetence and insanity, the GOP has a historic opportunity to change the leftward trajectory this nation has been on for the past century.
We just can’t be the enemy for whom the Democrats have planned.
I don’t think we the people will allow it this time.
Time will tell.
I think we made a tactical error, to use your battle metaphor, by not taking on Jan. 6th immediately. Lies have become “truths.” The accused have suffered shamefully. Even Mike Lee, the best Constitutionalist in the Senate, is paying a huge price for taking a call from his President. We should have called what it was — another Democratic scheme to take down Trump. History will get it right, but we can’t wait that long.
They really are that stupid, but that doesn't make them any less dangerous. The truth really seems to unhinge some of them. I'm doing a 30 day Facebook jail stretch for posting an article that cited peer reviewed studies and links to the CDC website on dangers associated with the jab.
“When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”