“We have to destroy Hong Kong in order to save it”

More serious, even, than football

“We have to destroy Hong Kong in order to save it”  That’s really the message, isn’t it, of the protesters when they say “if we burn, you burn with us”. To which I said, no thanks.

Now it seems to motivate the madness of the US.
China has gone ahead with the Security Law. That was expected. The US is ramping up the threats to China. That, too, was expected.
But does it have to throw Hong Kong under the bus? By removing all the special treatments we enjoy as an autonomous region of China? Does it really have to destroy us in order to “save” us?
The US is ramping up European and Australian support, and it seems they are likely to go along.
None of this in the least bit good for us. It may satisfy virtue signalling by Trump and his acolytes. But it will do our businesses and our autonomy grave harm. Far more than the Security Law itself.*
The only way out of it would be for the US to turn its metaphorical guns on the mainland and on mainland officials.
This is all grim consequence of the HKHRDA. Which, we recall, was promoted to the US Congress by local protesters and pan-Dems who made special trips to Washington to plead for an extra-territorial law punishing us in Hong Kong for Beijing overreach. Oh boy!
Meantime Britain’s Foreign Minister is talking of providing eacape route for refugees.  Not good.
None of this any good.
Remember that most infamous sentence from the Vietnam war: “we had to destroy the village in order to save it”.
Are people really going to go ahead and destroy Hong Kong in order to “save” us?

ADDED: Alex Lo, who only last week described the passing of a Security Law as a “masterstroke” is now as gloomy as I am:

“Forget about Hong Kong being “the goose that lays golden eggs” for China, or the conduit and window for the Western world to enter and invest in China. Such considerations are out the window in this rising titanic struggle between the two superpowers. It’s hard to see a good outcome for Hong Kong now.“ [Here]

Albert Cheng is also gloomy. While Grenville Cross says we have only ourselves to blame for failing to implement Article 23. I agree. And the reason for the failure is opposition by the pan-Dems.

*ADDED: A knowledgeable reader comments that the effects in HK of a US change to the status of HK will not have a dramatic effect on HK. It would likely harm US companies more than HK, especially US banks, who could lose out on lucrative IPOs (HK was the largest IPO market in 2019). The readier's advice to the US: “go for it!”.  i.e. shoot yourself in the foot, why don'cha!