THE MISSION BEYOND THE MOMENT.
What you believe matters. What you do and how you behave and respond will matter more.
Napoleon and his army celebrated lots of small victories when he invaded Russia - they even threw a party in Moscow after some hard fought battles. But by the time the war was over, what remained of his army limped and staggered back to France, broken and nearly starved to death from a military campaign against enemy forces in a climate they weren’t prepared for - clearly, these victories were short live and proved to be far less meaningful than the necessary to hold their ground.
Carrying their wounded with them, they scavenged for food and water all the while endure constant attacks by Russian troops. Of the 600,000 combat troops that invaded, less than 30,000 made it back to France in one of the largest most catastrophic military defeats in history.
Napoleon’s troops continued to celebrate the conquest and expansion of Napoleon’s empire, meanwhile, the Russians, beat up and bruised as they were, weren’t abandoning the fight. Instead, they set out to play the long game.
While Napoleon took a lot of territory, he was only able to hold it as long as he continued winning every subsequent battle.
Napoleon’s problem was that he failed to win ground he could defend over the course of the war and once the Russian troops got back on their feet and started returning fire, the pendulum began to swing and the ground Napoleon won in the short term changed hands yet again.
The long game looks beyond the immediate win/loss. The long game mentality works to establishes wins that help hold your position no matter how the next battle plays out. It focuses on lasting victories - wins that secure your position matter how the next fight turns out.
If you think America is in some kind of MAGA heaven for all eternity because we have Trump and JD Vance in the Oval Office, and the left will never again take the White House—you may want to consult your history books. You’ll learn how quickly the shoe can be on the other foot.
I believe President Trump is in a greater position to secure the long game win because he has the boldness and brains that it would take - but he needs to follow the constitution if we want to take ground that can’t be used against us when the pendulum swings and positions of power changed hands yet again.
The constitution is the law of the land and it has outlived every president and will hopefully continued to outlive every president we have. The victory isn’t who the president is, the victory has everything to do with what the president does to reinforce our checks and balances in the rule of law.
I love President Trump’s aggressive posture on border security and law and order however, I am 100% against the federal government taking an ownership of any percentage of a public or private company like we’ve just done with Intel.
The idea that we purchased $11 billion of Intel stock for free is just not true
Giving subsidies grants or tax credits in exchange for equity stakes in the private sector is incredibly dangerous and Hhonestly, the Democrats are probably kicking themselves for not thinking of doing this sooner. Instead they’ve tried to do this the hard way through E.S.G. investing policies. But once the shoe is on the other foot, the Democrats will move it lightning speed to extort companies to give a percentage of company ownership an exchange for tax credits, grants, and subsidies - all of which are paid for by US taxpayers.
If we’re gonna achieve any long lasting political or policy victories, we need to ensure that they’re rooted in the defensibility of our constitution, that way we can take ground that we can defend and not just immediately be on the run from the tyranny of the left if/when they get some authority.