Trump Made A Critical Error
And His Weakness Cost Him A Country
Anyone who has read “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu can see where Trump made his mistake.
Trump has lived his life, and especially these last four years, by living on the edge. He found an audience by being pro-gun to the Second Amendment crowd and he got another audience by expressing bigotry to the racists. His embrace of conspiracy theories allowed him the allegiance of the QAnon crowd. He understood that each of these groups needed a spokesman and he filled that need.
Sun Tzu quotes, “Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.” When Trump started spouting the rhetoric of each of these groups, he added the support of the plain old anarchists to the mix. With each of these groups in hand he had his core supporters, the true believers who would fight when and where he asked them to fight.
What each of these groups thought was that Trump truly believed all that he said. The idea that he spouted their tenets simply for their effect was unfathomable. Barack Obama had chastened these groups but was unable to change their core beliefs. Instead, they bided their time, as they had in the past. They were waiting for a champion to take up their cause. As Sun Tzu said, “One cat at the hole, and ten thousand mice dare not come out; one tiger in the valley, and ten thousand deer cannot pass through.” Once the Obama presidency was over, the mice started looking out of their holes.
Most Americans are in a state of shock in seeing how many people were willing to discard democracy. But the cat was gone and now the mice had permission to spew their hate, proudly, without fear of consequences. So, marches with a mixture of white nationalist groups grew in frequency and after Charlottesville Trump called them ‘good people’. QAnon followers were ecstatic when Trump repeated even their craziest of beliefs. They didn’t even care when he said, “I heard that these are people that love our country,” because they understood he had to ‘act’ like he didn’t know them…only they were in on the secret that he was one of them.
When January 6th came it was a day of excitement. Trump had at last assembled the truest core of each of these groups together in the same place and time. Like a messiah figure he rose up to the podium and incited the crowd. Once he worked them into a frenzy he unleashed them with a command to go to the Capitol, where he “would be with them.”
Of course we all know the rest of the story. Trump didn’t show up. Instead, he got comfy on the sofa and watched the anarchy from the safety of the White House. The insurgents themselves were not fearful of consequences. The videos prove that, and we’ve seen show the rest, a variety of groups, each leaderless to the whole, take over the Capitol. It was easy because they had been getting help from the inside. But here is where Trump made his critical mistake; to protect himself from the blame in case the insurgents were unsuccessful, Trump did not lead. His actions instead ensured failure. Trump’s retreat to the White House left the insurgents without direction. Instead, each group went its own way and the lack of a single purpose ultimately allowed for their failure.
As Sun Tzu said, “He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.” Even though the ‘enemy’ was unprepared, Trump was also unprepared to lead when his leadership would have allowed his victory. No wonder the Proud Boys called him weak.
