That’s exactly what I’m appealing to. Khashoggi got murdered brazenly, and nothing could be done about it. Hong Kong protestors get detained indefinitely, and nothing can be done about it.

The American imperative is that we must do something about it. Our failure is that we have a threshold that needs to be met, but we do have a threshold. In most of the world there is no threshold. You can do anything, indefinitely, with no change.

That’s why Putin is a multi decade President. That’s why China has a multi decade firewall. There’s no threshold.

We are imperfect, but we acknowledge the boiling points, an actual metric we can work with. A number we can improve upon.