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  • He who can destroy a thing controls the thing - Paul Mua'dib Atreides

    I love how much western fiction explicitly warns against the things that western powers constantly, constantly do. What's that? A hardened people living in a critical juncture of global trade have been tempered by years of genocidal war, have survived, and can now squeeze the entire world to force the mighty to their knees? You don't fucking say.

    • War of the Worlds was explicitly written to try to make settlers understand what it is like to be on the receiving end of colonialism.

      Of course the settlers weren't successful because they had better technology or tactics but because they were just that fucking evil and were willing to go to incredible lengths to do genocide.

      • I did not know that about War of the Worlds. Respect to Wells.

        I have a theory that many attempts to resist imperialism were premised on the idea that there's no way they'd just keep sending wave after wave after wave of poor people at us to die of tropical diseases and starvation and warfare. At some point they'll decide it's not worth it. Right? Right?

        Oh shit the Martians died of malaria just like so many settlers who decided to build towns in miserable disease ridden swamps! Holy shit! Context!

    • Something that never ceases to amaze and infuriate me about in particular liberals and faux leftists who are only 'doing leftism' performatively is that they honestly seem utterly incapable of understanding that art with a social message is also art with a message about people in said society, and can thus be applied individually to themselves in some respects.

      Theyll go on and on about characters and events in a fictional world, and then when you present them with an analagous real world situation, even the kinds of things the stories own creators said they were commenting on or based story elements off of...

      ...then all the rules change, its unrealistic to expect them to do anything different, exert an iota of actual effort, actually sacrifice or learn anything or do anything at all to not be just as bad as the bad thing or character they were just bemoaning.

      And then they hate you and start making up reasons you are a bad person.

      Easy example: Tell a right wing chud the Rebels in Star Wars are hugely inspired by the Viet Cong.

      Harder example: Tell a liberal that they live in the Empire and they are going along with it all out of fear and/or ignorance, and this amounts to at least tacit support, if not overt, for their policies, in the eyes of anyone /not/ the Empire.

      I seem to only know hypocrites and cogs in the machine. Come pull me out Neo, I am so very bored of most people.

    • I love how much western fiction explicitly warns against the things that western powers constantly, constantly do.

      Western Fiction describes the things that Western powers do, but I don't see Dune as a warning nearly so much as I see it as an entertaining reimagining. Frank Herbert mashed up then-modern Middle Eastern geopolitics with the more archaic idea of a Messianic figure challenging empire.

      But who is the real parallel to Paul Atreides? Muhammad bin Salman? Not a person who adopted native ideology and culture to defeat a colonial power, but a person who embraced Western colonialist strategies and toxic techie ideologies to do fascism at home in the style of a Royal English dipshit/Silicon Valley duffus mash up.

      Western literature is not a warning against its native ideology but a vector for its spreed. Herbert (almost certainly unwittingly) glorified the imperalist ideals by transforming the humble Frieman into the agents of its execution. Rather than warning westerners "turn back! this could be you!" he passed their ideals on to the Arabs with the message "you too can fuck up this hard and be rewarded for it!"

    • I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

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