That's like saying, "It's fine to say that you just hate the government of Nazi Germany, but if that's the only nation state you hate, it means you're racist against Germans." What?

I hate every apartheid state with equal intensity, however, since South Africa ended their system of apartheid, that just leaves Israel. I suppose if Israel's system of apartheid was ended first and South Africa's remained, it would mean I was racist against white people or something. Funny how who I'm "racist" towards is entirely dependant on who's doing apartheid.

"Trump's comments still fall broadly within the ambit of the longstanding U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity regarding any action in the event of a Taiwan contingency."

Right, because you're doing zero analysis of the economic or political structures involved and playing fast and loose with terminology.

Incredibly based. Just having someone with a voice in that chamber would be huge.

That doesn't give people license to lie about him.

"Stuttered"

Liberals and making shit up to punch left, name a more iconic duo.

Y'all never have the receipts for anything you say. Bunch of messy little drama queens.

It’s cute of you to step in to defend your alt account, but you can’t be serious.

Lmao.

Is there anything that could possibly falsify any of your evidence-free "inferences?"

In this hypothetical, because I refuse to give him the satisfaction of cooperating in any way. If he knows that he can get me to do things by threatening to kill babies, then I'm just encouraging him to threaten to kill babies.

I'm not trying to "talk tough," there are situations where I would cooperate with a hostage taker, but murdering babies is a red line, for me personally.

If you want to understand, I can explain fairly simply.

Consider this thought experiment. We are getting $100 to split, but only if they can agree on how to split it: I get to make an offer, then you choose whether to accept. If you announce that you'll accept whatever deal so long as accepting is better than the alternative - that is, that you'll act "rationally" - then the rational thing for me to do is to offer you only $1, while I get $99. Researchers have actually tested this game in real life, however, and it generally doesn't play out that way. Why? Because the numbers don't tell the whole story of what you're giving up by accepting a bad deal. Once you've demonstrated that you'll accept a deal like that, then you're communicating something about your behavior for all future deals. It may be rational in the context of a closed experiment, but for the general case, our minds know better than what may appear "rational" at first glance. If you tell me, "I will refuse anything less than $30," then you are openly declaring that you intend to behave "irrationally" and trying to convince me that you will - and it would most likely produce better results than behaving "rationally."

The moment that you say, "My only condition for voting for the democrats is that they be better than the republicans, who are unimaginably horrible," you have sacrificed every ounce of bargaining power that you could've wielded. So the real calculation is not "Who's better between Trump and Biden," but rather, is the difference between Trump and Biden worth sacrificing all my bargaining power?" And for me, the fact that Biden is supporting genocide makes that decision very easy and straightforward. I'd rather at least try to leverage what power I have against genocide altogether, rather than supporting the "lesser genocide." If I cannot set even something like genocide as a red line, then I am very clearly communicating to politicians that they can count on my vote no matter what they do, and they have no reason to ever consider my political priorities.

Also, are you aware that some of these people “lifted out of poverty” were folks in rural areas who were totally fine where they were at.

That's... certainly a take, alright. I suppose it's possible that hundreds of millions of rural Chinese were voluntarily choosing to live in extreme poverty out of some sort of commitment to asceticism. I'll admit that this was not a possibility I had considered before.

I think a correct path forward for China economically is somewhere close to where they’re at now but with more civil liberties.

So then the billionaires aren't the problem you have with China then, if I'm understanding you.

What ideals and goals might those be?