u/jj4211

Yeah it's essentially letting China win by default..

Well, here's me pinning my hopes on your interpretation. A few more moderate leaders in the world would be a gigantic relief after so many years of how things have been going. I mostly grew up the last time the world swung a bit more moderate and would be ecstatic to feel that way again.

Is it the case that the "they" that want a more moderate leader are consistent with the "they" that actually get to make the call?

I think the US has sunk it's own ship without any particular effort by BRICS frankly.

Yeah but their violence in Ukraine dilutes NATO military attention, even if they aren't that powerful a direct military ally.

I suspect the concern is that no one, including China itself knows how strong they would be in a military conflict, since they haven't been in an at scale conflict in living memory, using economic power instead to great effect.

If they are really wanting to violently assert their view on Taiwan, they want global attention divided.

So your take is that because the US has misbehaved, then Russia should misbehave harder? Not that the nations should behave better in general....

Having a head of state immune from criminal prosecution seems to be a thing Americans wouldn't abide... right?

Simple, you are so awesome, remember that you owe god one and even when a bunch of people are saying to be careful, listen to me because I'm the word of God, even though I'll try to assert some false humility by claiming I'm not persuading, just "encouraging" you to do the things I say god says...

The whole "my word comes from God" should be one of the biggest sins of they were at all close to reasonable.

You have many voices speaking to you Sir, but there is only ONE voice that matters. HIS voice

And, conveniently, since he isn't actually talking to you, I'll let my voice tell you what HIS voice is saying.

I don't personally know, but as far as I could tell, people in the USA were largely ok with the Vietnam war, until they started to draft people to send to Vietnam who never wanted to be in a military.

That's like 2 or 3 fentanyl pills, if I understand Bondi right...

Actually, if I recall it was ultimately still slightly less than half (after the massive excess of California votes that don't count came in). He still had the most votes of the candidates, but no candidate garnered more than half.

Which is really just splitting hairs on a technicality, ultimately 77 million people voted this way, and it would have still been a deep problem even if Harris had won the popular and electoral votes.

I agree, the third big single powerful person is certainly Xi. I suppose one can say the "sociopath" is more evident with Netanyahu than Xi, because for now China is able to sit back and let Russia and USA self sabotage to a weaker position while mucking with the rest of the world, while China gets to play comparative good guy in foreign policy. This is of course grading on a curve, they aren't saints either.

Agriculture probably hurts a little. China could not care less about American digital services ( they largely banned them anyway) and if it comes down to it, they can totally ignore patent protection. They do have some issues with actual chip design and manufacturing, though that will likely see them improve if they have to.

Don't know that China is a better place to be for the citizenry or anything, but the government and business leaders are in a better supported position than American counterparts in an economic split.

It might have been one thing if the US had continued to fixate on China and maybe isolate China, but he is simultaneously screwing with everyone in the world and tarnishing our image as comparatively "good guys" on human rights undermines our position. China may still be viewed as a bad actor, but our bad behavior might make them the lesser of the few evils.

I'm not sure.

We are here mainly because the business leaders sold out the core of our economy to enrich themselves thanks to cheap labor of an at the time backwards China. They had the hubris to think the workers replaceable but the leadership somehow magic.

Now they increasingly see China business leadership clearly emerging as an independent force that puts pressure on them.

They spent decades helping China gain independent capabilities and it's too late to claw that back

About the only thing they are really hurt by are the export controls on chips and chip manufacturing technology, but they are getting there. Yes there's a crunch in their export business that will hurt, but it's easier to cope with that than just not having the facilities to build the stuff you want or the expansive labor force.

Yep, and then pause them claiming, like he did this time, that somehow magically every nation in the world managed to negotiate with him to his satisfaction within a couple of days....

Or claim that no one but China threatened retaliatory tariffs (and of course a lot of them did) and *that's* why he gave them a reprieve to reward them for not retaliating.

Or to claim that China is a bad actor because they imposed punitive tariffs and that's only something that bad actors do...

But then you need to buy into the conspiracy theory that the earth is round

It's worth a shot, but by and large the more reasonable conservatives are generally no where near those communities. Certainly the moderation of those communities are fanatic about Trump. The conservatives that you might have hoped to call Trump on his stuff have calculated that they can't afford to challenge Trump even if they personally think he is in the wrong. The ones that have calculated otherwise have been pushed out of the conservative community.

They should, but anecdotes featuring a person you somehow know beyond the specific situation are more potent.