[–] 29 points 3 days ago

Believing it is anywhere close to happening is foolish. But having an elected Democrat say this is useful for agitation -- it's not some radical notion any reasonable person would reject; it has some level of institutional legitimacy.

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  • [–] 33 points 4 days ago (17 children)

    Every time I read a passage from Sakai I think:

    1. A good chunk of this is insightful material that is not common elsewhere and seems hard to contest (the U.S. has no feudal or communal past, and a major reason for its founding was to continue the oppression of indigenous and enslaved peoples).
    2. Another good chunk is a lot more contestable, certainly if the argument is that the U.S. is unique among capitalist states (all classes and strata have a preoccupation with petty privileges and property, moreso than other capitalist societies).
    3. A third chunk that seems like a huge stretch (there is no U.S. proletariat).

    The support for the latter two groups has struck me as thin and/or unconvincing.

    For example, the "no (white) proletariat" argument seems to boil to down to "they are paid too well to be proles." ArcanePotato cites a passage elsewhere in this thread stating that 18th- or 19th-century U.S. farm workers made more than their European peers, and there's also a passage in Settlers with figures on how many white households in the U.S. in the 1980s had a variety of modern conveniences (refrigerators, TVs, cars, etc.). I think this ignores that class is traditionally thought of as based more on one's relationship to the means of production than to any absolute level of wealth -- exchanging your labor for wages is what makes you proletariat, even if you make more than the person working next to you. If you're working a wage labor job and your wage doubles, your interest in class struggle may become less urgent, but your relationship to the means of production doesn't change. Temporarily placating the proletariat through higher wages isn't the same as the proletariat not existing.

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    The new owner of more than 5,000 mostly rent-stabilized apartments says it has agreed to waive millions of dollars in unpaid rent that tenants owed in the years before a high-profile bankruptcy sale targeted by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

    The company Summit Properties purchased the 93-building portfolio in March after its previous owner Pinnacle Group went bankrupt in a transaction that drew intervention from Mamdani and top city officials. Summit agreed to forgive tenants’ back rent during a recent meeting with leaders from the Union of Pinnacle Tenants, which represents residents across four boroughs where Summit bought Pinnacle buildings.

    Many tenants began withholding rent because they had been dealing for years with unsafe conditions, while others fell behind because they could not afford their monthly payments, according to the tenant union. They may now get a blank slate.

     

    For the uninitiated:

    The Prime Directive, also known as Starfleet General Order 1, the Non-Interference Directive, or the principle of non-interference, was the embodiment of one of Starfleet's most important ethical principles: noninterference with other cultures and civilizations. At its core was the philosophical concept that covered personnel should refrain from interfering in the natural, unassisted, development of societies, even if such interference was well-intentioned. The Prime Directive was viewed as so fundamental to Starfleet that officers swore to uphold the Prime Directive, even at the cost of their own life or the lives of their crew.

    The fundamental idea is that you can have the best of intentions but still fuck things up, so you shouldn't intervene even if you think you have good reason. This strikes me as the best counterargument to what constantly sucks liberals into imperialist adventures -- the tempting idea that "someone has to do something," or "if we stand by and watch bad things happen, doesn't that make us complicit?"

    The Prime Directive has a simple answer to that: it's likely you're going to make things worse, and what right do you have to intervene, anyway? The Star Trek libs in your life will have to recognize this principle, and the closer you look at U.S. foreign policy, the more sense it makes. It's also a natural lead-in to talking about how often the government lies to manufacture consent for wars.

    And what are they going to do, say "that's a fictional story and the real world is different"? These are the folks who are comparing Lev Parnas to Neville Longbottom or some shit.

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