{"id":39536,"date":"2017-07-28T03:00:04","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T07:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=39536"},"modified":"2017-07-27T10:09:07","modified_gmt":"2017-07-27T14:09:07","slug":"game-of-thrones-in-the-dc-swamp-where-nobody-has-read-sun-tzus-art-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/07\/28\/game-of-thrones-in-the-dc-swamp-where-nobody-has-read-sun-tzus-art-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Game of Thrones<\/em> in the DC swamp, where nobody has read Sun Tzu’s Art of War<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kurt Schlicter<\/a> offers some strategic advice to President Trump, illustrated by some recent Game of Thrones<\/em> narrative (dunno how accurate, as I’ve neither read the books nor watched any recent TV episodes):<\/p>\n

President Trump has done remarkably well so far, considering the hatred, contempt, and subversion he faces from members of his own party \u2013 much less the garbage he endures from the astonishingly inept and newly Russophobic Democrats. These nimrods\u2019 bright idea for appealing to the deplorable people we call \u201cnormal Americans\u201d is to take the New Deal and replace the adjective with \u201cBetter.\u201d It has yet to occur to them to try not calling us \u201cJesus-loving gun freak racists who aren\u2019t afraid enough of the weather and don\u2019t believe women can have penises too.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s bad strategy to rely upon the lameness of your opposition. Instead, the president should be focused on launching a disciplined and overwhelming attack against the establishment to force his agenda through. But he\u2019s not doing that. He\u2019s messing up by going off on emotional tangents, and it will catch up with him.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Spoilers follow, so stop reading if you care.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the problem. The president has some huge challenges. He has limited combat power \u2013 yeah, he has a lot, and while it is still superior to his enemies, it is not unlimited. There\u2019s a basic military rule of thumb that you break at your own peril. You do not split a superior force.<\/p>\n

When you split a superior force, the enemy can then move to defeat you piecemeal. A superior force nearly guarantees a win. Take the guaranteed win. Grind out the victories. Don\u2019t split your army.<\/p>\n

They did in a recent Game of Thrones<\/em> episode. The hot girl with the dragons met with the sort-of-hot woman with the three hard-six daughters, the bi-curious pirate chick, the sassy old lady who used to be Emma Peel<\/a>, and the differently-abled person of shortness, and they came up with a war plan. It was a terrible war plan. They split their vastly superior force in two instead on focusing on the castle with the hot woman who was getting it on with her brother before she became a big enough star not to have to do nudity.<\/p>\n

Terrible plan. Naturally, the enemy destroyed their fleet because they split their forces and ditched their dragon air cover like morons. I expect the producers thought it was super progressive to have the generals be all either women-identifying women or dwarves, but then they got thoroughly beaten by a cis-vertical phallo-person of pallor.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s the girl\/midgetpower message they meant to convey, but whatev. The point is that when you lose focus and try to fight every battle, you risk losing every battle. The Sessions fight wasn\u2019t strategically necessary \u2013 hell, \u201cwinning\u201d would mean someone even worse because there\u2019s no way the Senate will confirm anyone as AG that Trump actually wants.<\/p>\n

Focus. Discipline. No one enemy can compete with the president, but a bunch of enemies can. Using the superior force at hand in a cunning, targeted way can bring back the winning. But uncoordinated, quixotic, emotion-driven lashing out? No, that\u2019s what the Democrats and the Fredocons want from the president \u2013 mostly because they know from their own bitter experience how it leads to losing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kurt Schlicter offers some strategic advice to President Trump, illustrated by some recent Game of Thrones narrative (dunno how accurate, as I’ve neither read the books nor watched any recent TV episodes): President Trump has done remarkably well so far, considering the hatred, contempt, and subversion he faces from members of his own party \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,13],"tags":[768,1037,1147,517,101,985],"class_list":["post-39536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-democrat","tag-donaldtrump","tag-gameofthrones","tag-republican","tag-tv","tag-washingtondc"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-ahG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39536"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39538,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39536\/revisions\/39538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}