• Owl [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Using batons and more than 10,000 canisters of tear gas, officers crushed the protest movement in 2020

    Fuck off, we got all that, tear gas canisters deliberately aimed at our heads, rubber bullets, and run over by horses in one week of BLM protests.

    “I have contacts and friends who are either imprisoned or under threat right now,”

    Lol "contacts" whatever you self important shitter. Also "or under threat" is doing one hell of a lift. Everyone in rural America thinks they're under threat of BLM Antifa Super Terrorists taking their guns literally tomorrow, does that count as "under threat?"

    there was an overwhelming three-to-one consensus against saying anything

    The shitter got buried under a landslide majority in a democratic vote. Rather than simply abiding by the vote, he went to some opinion columnist to stir the same shit. In the name of freedom and democracy, I guess.

    To Li, the incident reflects the influence within the DSA of “tankies,” [...] he’s never seen them in his subcommittee

    Personally I blame the influence of aliens. I've never seen them, but, well, you know.

    DSA is riven by disagreements over many topics. But it serves as a microcosm of an unresolved debate on the left

    3 to 1 majority against. Riven by disagreements.

    Tensions between Washington and Beijing have been increasing on every front—military, economic, diplomatic, cultural

    [Joe biden is] quietly boosting the US troop presence in Taiwan [...] announcing a new defense pact with the United Kingdom and Australia

    Wow look at all these tensions that the Chinese are causing!

    Joe Biden has characterized the confrontation with China as a battle between autocracy and democracy

    As an aside, I agree with Biden on this.

    Many people on the left are trying to navigate the space between the two caricatured poles Wang describes.

    Who? My rhetoric teacher would've docked me an entire grade for that, unless the assignment was specifically about being slimy.

    They are attempting to develop an alternative to a new Cold War—a position that opposes military confrontation in the Asia-Pacific while being open to increased cooperation with Beijing on issues like climate change

    This isn't an amazing thread-the-needle position. This is the most boring pro-China position possible. Because the military confrontation is entirely the US. Citation: the list of examples of increased military tensions from earlier in literally this article

    For this article, I talked to a range of left-leaning policy makers, activists, and intellectuals

    Really? Then why is your star example some random wrecker who wouldn't shut up after getting his proposal voted down 3 to 1?

    [Picture of some pig about to beat someone with a baton. ACAB, as always. The victim is out of frame. Everyone except the cop appears to be a journalist. There is no shield wall or fog of tear gas, because this is a soft baby protest.]

    What, that's the best you could do?

    Everyone I spoke with could agree on one thing: Further escalation between the United States and China would be a disaster.

    Why are you trying to push an anti-China article then?

    [laundry list of bad things that will happen in the US because of increased anti-China tensions]

    "The debate isn’t whether China is a good or bad actor, [... ] the question is: What is the US going to do about it?”

    Okay I think my rhetoric teacher would've given me some points back for that one, that was slick.

    List of unrelated bad things -> imply China is cause of bad things -> what are we gonna do about it? But this particle is formatted as a list of quotes from experts, so it has an excuse to suddenly jump to a thought that doesn't follow. But this is the first and second expert quotes, so the pattern isn't established yet. Just implication.

    Anyway I got tired of reviewing this article so I hope you enjoy this. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.