Thread by @BaldingsWorld

You've heard me say that the Galaxy Brains dealing with foreign policy are simply deeply unserious people and thinkers that if not for their influece should be ignored. Let me explain the reasons I say this. First, it is obvious their minds have been made up and no evidence 1/n

Or facts are going to change their mind. Pick any topic surrounding China and they cannot argue factually or empirically relying on data. So no matter what data or evidence you provide them, it is dismissed for increasingly creative reasons because facts don't matter 2/n

Second, their thinking is entirely inconsistent chasing straw men. Like theNYT Oped, "free market purists" will never be content with China. There is zero that the Chinese economy has been centralizing and shutting down markets. It is an invented straw men by a research firm 3/n

Desperate to stay in Hong Kong and willing to say whatever it takes that it invents straw men like "free market" purists. We see many other examples like this. Third, they are desperate to require specific current tradeoffs of non-Chinese entities for vague future promises 4/n

Their argument rests on the goodwill of China many years into the future on something like the environment while requiring specific behavior or overlooking bad behavior by China right now. Fourth, there is no memory or adjustment of how to reset expectation 5/n

Whether it is the agreement on Hong Kong, Trump trade deal, or any other we could cite, there is a deep desire to ignore observed behavior over emphemeral promises. This leads to a never ending cycle of insanity where they recommend the same strategy that brought them 6/n

To this very point. Academics plead for engagement saying it will help but engagement with China over the last 20 years was at its peak and China went in the complete opposite direction academics said it would. Yet still they call for the same policies 7/n

If you want to be taken seriously, even as a dove, you have to recommend a) specific tangible policies b) that match past Chinese behavior c) that China will adhere to once agreed to d) rely on actual broadbased evidence and data. This is all pretty reasonable and simple 8/n

Apologists and doves however cannot even meet a couple of those standards which is why they are a deeply unserious group of thinkers. If it were not for their broad political influence but this is the idiocy we have to confront everyday.