Doubledee

I thought the Poppy War was pretty bad. Killed my motivation to read anything else from her.

There's a much better candidate for the comparison: Saruman, the guy whose whole deal was resisting Sauron by adopting all of his means.

Look, everyone is saying Saruman is just as bad as Sauron, but here's the thing:

Yes he is moving towards Sauron strategically on specific issues, but these issues are important to his base and he has to throw them a bone.

Yes he is illegally killing Rohan civilians, but nobody claimed the defense of the regions west of his Stone Circle system would be painless.

Yes his armies look and foreign policy look eerily similar to Sauron's, but he promises he's trying to stop him actually.

You purists in the Shire keep saying it's not necessary to destroy the whole forest of Fangorn but he got the endorsement of Lurtz, so he clearly knows more about politics than you do.

Anyone serious understands that resisting Sauron means voting for Saruman.

Lol, imagine going to this length to figure out a way to vote how you want without changing the preordained outcome by just making your decision. No, in real democracies you have to engage in the political equivalent of a suicide pact in order to not feel guilty about voting for what you like.

Nah, whatever fella. We saw how you felt about it. Why are you returning to the trough now, weeks later?

Are we ?

I don't think China wants to be the enemy of the US. They are the largest trading partner of the US. They seem genuinely interested in cooperating and bettering their own society. USians seem to be the ones bent on enmity. The US apparently thinks building infrastructure and developing the economies of other nations is 'malign influence.' The US killed citizens of allied nations through propaganda to ensure they wouldn't become friendlier with China, who was offering them vaccines while the US and Europe were hoarding their own.

The US sees 'being a large country and having influence' as threatening, there's no way to peacefully coexist with a country that sees everyone else as a threat by default.

Well we could devote those resources to solving the problems they are criticizing maybe. It would improve the lives of USians and undercut the arguments being brought up.

Spending billions to tell other countries that more infrastructure is actually bad is probably counterproductive and wasteful. Like how we spent money to kill Filipino people by telling them to avoid the Chinese produced covid jab.

M'Liege, I have retrieved yon bill for ye.

“(3) ACTIVATIONS OF AUTHORITY.—

“(A) DISCRETIONARY ACTIVATION.—The Secretary may activate the border emergency authority if, during a period of 7 consecutive calendar days, there is an average of 4,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day.

“(B) MANDATORY ACTIVATION.—The Secretary shall activate the border emergency authority if—

“(i) during a period of 7 consecutive calendar days, there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day; or

“(ii) on any 1 calendar day, a combined total of 8,500 or more aliens are encountered.

Now you may say, "Aha, we have you hyperbolic hexbears now, it clearly says that the president doesn't just get to shut it down until they figure out 'what the hell is going on'!"

Which is correct. What it does is tie their hands such that they must shut the border down when an arbitrary number is reached, so they don't have to actually do anything and can plead their powerlessness when it happens. After all it's not up to them, it's just a mandate of a conservative law... that they want to pass.

What's more it makes me suspicious of you.

Genuinely curious, do you think it matters to anyone in an online forum if you are vaguely suspicious of them? I'm not sure why you would even say that. What are you trying to accomplish?

Uhm actually, if you think about it it's still harm reduction:

Think about how many Republicans Trump would appoint? Checkmate

"Would you please disarm yourselves while we aggressively posture and arm your neighbors? It would be very uncooperative of you to refuse. "

Nobody seems to recall how we got here, how this move was being pulled by the same people 4 years ago, except then it was begging for you to sympathize with the poor migrants being caged on the border. AOC even cried and got some beautiful PR photos made.

Now it's all secure the border and pass the Republican plan to lock it down and hand every subsequent president the button to immediately shut the border down at their discretion.

And however Israel escalates, however many Lebanese or Syrians or Palestinians or Iranians we kill defending them, no matter how high the bodies stack they will be back in 4 years telling you that if they don't win the human toll will be unspeakable.