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Sun Tzu, ‘The Golden Bridge,’ and the End of the Ruling Elite
A retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel, former CIA paramilitary operations officer, and veteran of multiple armed conflicts, revolutions, and contingency operations, has recently published a most compelling, and more than just a bit foreboding, analysis showing why the “Ruling Elite” will ultimately fall. I decided to highlight that excellent piece today because, for me, that “elite”, which gave us Hillary!, Obama(s), John Kerry, Mitt Romney, The Lincoln Project, Liz Cheney, and “President” Biden, cannot collapse too soon.
The Inevitable End of the Ruling Elite begins with the biblical story we all know as the basis of Inherit the Wind after leading with a description of the blindness of the elite:
The ruling elite appears comfortable delivering the command “Submit” to traditional America, and is not concerned with the consequences that will follow.
“For they have sown the wind,
And shall reap the whirlwind
The stalk has no bud
it will produce no flour
Were it to yield grain
foreigners would swallow it up.”— Hosea 8:7
Here are a few highlights which I set forth with the caveat that the entire piece should be read and carefully considered as it offers a very slim ray of hope to those of us — and I am definitely in that number — who feel like the emotional roller-coaster of the last six months has been akin to a psychological battering ram.
The author, Lt. Col. Max Morton, whose credentials strongly suggest his is a serious voice of experience and deep knowledge in his fields, starts by discussing what he terms “the forever war on terror” and how it is being turned against us, the 75 million Americans who (actually!) voted for President Trump:
As America prepares to depart its first stop—Afghanistan—in the forever war on terror, and shifts its focus onto the domestic political opposition, there has been much dishonest talk equating the ideology of conservative Americans with foreign terror groups, such as al-Qaida and ISIS. Such talk is opportunistic fear-mongering from the worst of Washington’s nomenklatura. Conservative and independent thought in America is not an extremist terrorist ideology, and to even hint at it is a bold lie and a sign of nefarious intent on the part of the ruling elites and their backers in the national security apparatus.
Following a description of his actual, on-the-ground, experience, in which he “witnessed firsthand successful, visionary tactics as well as utter train wrecks of strategy—and even situations where one could not properly say there was a strategy at all,” he makes a distinction between different types of terrorists and insurgents I will readily admit I had never before seen spelled out so clearly:
In the embedded counterterrorism environment, there is a significant difference between how terrorists and insurgents behave when facing hostile actions from units like the one I belonged to. Insurgents are normally citizens or residents of the country in which they are fighting. Because of that, they have familial, tribal, and political connections within society. If cornered, and facing the option between death and surrender, insurgents will often choose surrender. This is because, in their minds, there is a possibility of life after capture. If they surrender, once they are sent to a local host nation detention facility, they can leverage their familial, tribal, and political connections to eventually gain release—and, if they wish, they can then reenter the fight, or not.
In contrast, third-country nationals, foreign fighters, and transnational terrorists who are not citizens of the country in which they are fighting, generally have few, if any, acceptable post-capture options. They have none of the familial, tribal, or political connections that make buying or negotiating their way out of detention a possibility. This makes them less inclined to throw down their weapons and surrender when the American green-eyed devil shows up in the middle of the night. They understand their unique status with U.S. forces as unlawful enemy combatants means that they stand a good chance of disappearing into special or indefinite detention in a variety of horrifying locations and conditions. They have zero expectation of seeing a fair trial, and because they are effectively human plutonium, no tribal leader or local political official is going to rescue them. They intimately comprehend that what awaits them is worse than death.
Then comes a passage containing a phrase that carries such force it jumped off the page at me:
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what country you come from, what god you worship, or what political ideology you believe in. When a man has no options, when no hope remains, when for him there is no tomorrow . . . he will fight with ferocity and fury not of this world. It is worth considering this fact—written in history from Thermopylae to the Alamo and to the Warsaw ghetto—when attempting to impose one’s will on another.
“Submit”/”or what”? — two phrases the author says probably constitute the origin of conflict and violence throughout the history of mankind:
…. If one wishes to avoid that violence, it is best to avoid forcing that discussion.
In war, there is a military strategy called the “Golden Bridge.” It is used when fighting a determined and powerful opponent that you may be able to defeat, but not completely destroy. The Golden Bridge is a path for a defeated enemy to retreat from the battlefield. This idea comes from Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu who wrote in the Art of War, “Do not push too hard on a desperate enemy,” as this will cause him to fight to the death, which in the end inflicts a much higher cost on your own forces. The goal is to defeat the enemy with the least number of casualties and expenditures of resources on one’s own side—thus maintaining the strength and capabilities of your own army, and in the case of internal conflicts, maintaining a recoverable semblance of order.
But the opposite of that supremely sensible and humane approach was that of the Nazis known as “kettling,” which comes from the German word for cauldron, kessel:
… There is no retreat allowed, and the objective is to isolate the enemy and cause the maximum amount of misery and chaos prior to a final crushing attack.
If we examine what is happening in America now, it is possible to make out the initial shape of the ruling elite’s strategy vis-à-vis their political opposition—and it looks like a cauldron. Through legislative actions such as the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, H.R. 1 federalized voting law, gun control, Supreme Court-packing, and D.C. and Puerto Rico state initiatives, one can see the kettle forming. If you don’t see a Golden Bridge, it is because there isn’t one.
The author then expresses the opinion that members of the ruling elite are not fighters (the one area of his discussion I have a bit of disagreement with, as it seems to me they have proven themselves to be ruthless, vicious, amoral, no-holds-barred fighters in the past couple of decades) and levels this most somber warning:
Left to their own devices, the inevitable result of their mistake will be chaos and some version of armed conflict, and most likely the end of our republic as we knew it. For traditional Americans, it is worth considering now whether this is an acceptable future.
***
The elites have a plan. They believe they will be fine, because they’re counting on your submission. If anything remotely unanticipated happens, they can safely escape to their Martha’s Vineyard estates, their compounds in Montana, or their razor wire fortress in Washington, D.C. while things get sorted out by the loyal apparatchiks.
His conclusion offers some much-needed hope (joy!) for the survival of our Republic, a system of governance which has proven to be just as fragile as Dr. Franklin cautioned it would be:
In reality, they are not strong enough—or smart enough—to wield the command “Submit.” So, having picked up the sword, they will watch it be taken from their hands and then used against them by their very enemy—traditional Americans, who understand there will be no tomorrow, and in whose eyes there is a fierceness, a fury, that is beyond their world. It will be a fatal miscalculation that will bring about the downfall of a cursed and failed American ruling elite. And perhaps, if we can recapture the founding principles of our republic, the beginning of a new and better governance by and for the people; one truly dedicated to liberty and justice for all.
A neighbor, proudly still displaying his Trump-Pence bumper sticker on his car (one of many here in the Florida Panhandle) summed up the feeling of so many of us smelly, stinky, deplorables, chumps, irredeemables when he said “they” really think we’re (75 million of us!) are just going to “roll over” and give up. That may be, I fervently pray, the “fatal miscalculation” to which Lt. Col. Morton referred. While I will be the first to admit I have, on many occasions recently, felt battered and (almost, but not quite) hopeless, to those who say “it can’t be done” my answer is short and oh-so-sweet: November 8, 2016.
And for those who may need an extra dose of inspiration, I highly recommend the movie “Darkest Hour”, concluding with what has to be one of the most stirring speeches in history, Sir Winston’s speech to Parliament in the gravest and most perilous time for his country in WWII. He ended with these immortal words:
We shall never surrender!
Never!
God Bless America!
Published in General
Thank you for this work, I believe that It added value to my membership.
Thank you very much for this comment; it is deeply appreciated! Sincerely, Jim
I read that American Greatness article over the weekend. Thanks for posting on it.
This, from the comments at that link is worth reposting here:
It is unattributed…it makes me think of Shane.
Superb post, thank you.
I think our Golden Bridge is the creeping secession we are seeing – half of states are now Second Amendment Sanctuary states, refusing to allow federal law to apply when it comes to gun rights. When it gets even crazier than it is now and the lines are clearer, conservatives will move to those states, while liberals will move to the blue states.
I believe it can all happen without a shot being fired. It probably won’t – but it could.
Great Post Jim.
I plan to take a couple of those quotes, and put them into letters to my stupid DemocRat “rulers” here in Washington State, and in Congress. They need to know that we will not roll over and play dead, as they attempt to control every aspect of our lives. We need to engage in any small act of civil disobedience that we can, wherever we are.
Between Atlas Shrugged, which I read over 50 years ago and thought was almost science fiction, and this one, that I will try to get this week, maybe there is hope we can get out of the Biden/ BLM mess. Hope so.
I think he’s dead right, but the Chinese know it as well and they’re running the basic strategy and will do what ever they can to prevent the gradual recuperation of sanity.
@baxtermiller, @IWalton, @navyjag, @RushBabe49, @Unsk, @iWe, @philo, I just noted a piece on Powerline entitled “Time For Civil Disobedience?” which follows the thinking of several of your comments (which are all appreciated!) and I thought you might be as interested in this article as I was. As we see more and more of this insanity– as I’m typing this, a notification came up for an article in American Greatness about the Mayor (Tyrant) of DC banning dancing at indoor and outdoor weddings….wonder how many will sheepishly comply with such an inane edict as that one?)— I am confident we’ll see more and more civil disobedience. Unless, God Forbid, we truly have become a Nation of Sheep, in which case the Great American Experiment is basically over. Hope you enjoy the piece. Jim
I can’t help thinking, if I were in charge, I would wonder if I would do this, by what authority I would do this? And by what science I should do this. None of it makes sense, really.
I posted the same article on 30 Apr ( https://ricochet.com/947342/when-push-comes-to-shove/ ), so thanks for the assist in getting this out there.
@baxtermiller, @IWalton, @navyjag, @RushBabe49, @Unsk, @iWe, @philo, @flicker, here is another interesting article illustrating the more and more prevalent attitude that, as the author suggests, “enough is enough” with all the Fauchistic (uncannily similar to the word Facistic, isn’t it?) edicts and mask “mandates”, etc. The piece is entitled “Obedience Fatigue” and appears at lawandliberty.org. It is written by a gentleman who I can certainly identify with, as he describes himself as a “fully recovered lawyer”, as do I. I hope you find this article interesting,
Sincerely, Jim
@flicker, I appreciate this comment as one does have to wonder if we have not entered some kind of Twilight Zone in which these people, like this loony Mayor of DC, have not just been seized by some kind of mental disorder as she is issuing an order which–to the extent that it ever did make any sense from the standpoint of “following the science”– no longer has any basis in science, CDC guidelines (to the extent that one can make sense of them), recent analyses in scholarly journals like the recent study out of MIT and The Great Barrington Declaration, etc., etc. By the way, how does one attend a wedding reception without having to stand or, for those willing to throw abandon to the wind, dance? Sincerely, Jim
Good points. I was just for a moment trying to put myself in her shoes, or any governor’s shoes and figure out what I would do, and their reactions are foreign to me, and I think to any normal American. I mean, their hearts may be in the right place, but they are fundamentally not helping, time after time.
It’s a very discordant feeling putting myself in the shoes of some others.