Sarah Paine

They don't have command experience, expensive spending habits, and then it gets better.

So they got all these tributaries.

Some of their tributaries produce really high quality opium.

And the emperors decide they want to sample the goods.

And the people who are preparing it for them also want to sample the goods.

And then the Manchu banner forces that are the Praetorian guard of the Manchus are also sampling the goods.

And then you go, why are the last Qing emperors incapable of producing offspring or have hardly any?

Because they got huge harems.

So what's their problem?

Well,

Well, if you're really totally high on drugs, you can ruin yourself.

And so that is what goes on.

No wonder they're losing these wars if some of your key thinkers are not thinking very clearly.

So the counter-argument to my argument says, look, it's nonsense.

I mean, the Japanese may have been really clever, but this is the real big event.

It's this massive series of civil wars, European imperialism, and the collapse of Manchu minority rule.

That would be the real thing.

Now, if I leave my argument here, I've just shot myself in the foot because I've just decimated my original argument with a pretty good counter-argument, and that would be bad.

That would hurt.

So you need to do a rebuttal, and it's really good to come from an unexpected direction.