In no way trying to defend him, hes hardly unique in this regard. Deplorable, but at best hes just overtly deplorable.

I think the shamelessness is the hallmark of this government.

Its a gradual process. Its not due to reach its peak for another few months afaik.

My assertion would be that baseline expectations for Sci-Fi are too high now.

Keep lots of logs of the writing and the sending, pray this actually happens so you can sue and settle out of court.

Its a shame they’re consistently failing to revitalize the franchise but I get it. TV in general was a lot cheaper to make when they were coming out, hence the incredibly long seasons.

Cheaper to make means you need less of a pre-existing fanbase to justify taking the risk.

I hope they have the balls to just go for it some time. They’ve wasted cash on way worse premises.

Sometimes people need to be shocked out of a lazy political engagement pattern, there arent a lot of ways to achieve it consistently.

Submit to reality, take no action and apply no pressure.

I dont rate this advice.

Expect nothing, demand it anyway.

Disconnect.

Your detector is very broken, send it in for repair.

Marxism isn’t non-objective by definition. Your interpretation isn’t objective simply because it’s Marxist. You’re applying a particular theoretical framework to determine what these institutions “really” function to do, then treating that conclusion as proof that other frameworks are invalid.

And I’ve never claimed left and right are a simple spectrum. Something can be multidimensional and still permit relative comparisons along particular dimensions

I comprehend your point. I dispute the premise. You’re asserting that the purpose of unions in imperialist countries is to placate workers and maintain imperialism, and therefore their function can’t meaningfully be described as left-wing. That’s your Marxist interpretation of their systemic role, not an objective property that follows from their existence within imperialism.

But that’s the premise I keep asking you to establish. I haven’t analysed anything as though it exists outside the system. You’re defining any analysis of form as necessarily doing that, then using that definition to prove that it does. That’s circular.

The fact you cant explain this must be telling you something about your premise?

That explains why context matters, but it still doesn’t explain why analysing or comparing a part necessarily divorces it from that context. I can consider both the form of a policy and how it functions within the wider system. Where’s the contradiction?

Why do you believe that?

Dont give another example with the premise baked in, put it into words.

But nobody is divorcing it from the system. Analysing a characteristic within its context and identifying its political orientation is entirely possible. You’re repeatedly equating distinguishing something analytically with pretending it’s independent, and those aren’t the same thing.

As I said at the time, those examples demonstrate that context matters, which I’ve never disputed. They don’t demonstrate that characteristics can’t also be described independently. Saying a kibbutz has a communalist economic structure doesn’t erase its settler-colonial context. Both facts can be true and analytically useful simultaneously.

You’re treating acknowledging one as necessarily obscuring the other, and that’s the part you haven’t established.

Ultimately, you could have saved us both a lot of time by acknowledging that what you really mean is: “I don’t think Europe should be described in terms of leftism because its underlying capitalist and imperialist structure disqualifies it.” That’s an opinion, and a reasonable one, but not an objectively correct conception of left and right.

But “it obfuscates reality” is the conclusion you keep asserting, not something you’ve demonstrated. Identifying one dimension of a system doesn’t prevent analysis of the others. Calling stronger organised labour relatively left-wing tells us something specific; we can then separately analyse how that labour movement relates to capitalism and imperialism.

At this point, calling my framework “weaker” because it doesn’t adopt yours is just circular.

But again, that’s your definition of left and right, not an argument for why mine is invalid. You’re defining them exclusively by which class ultimately benefits from the system; I’m using them to describe political characteristics that can vary within a system. That’s the disagreement we’ve been having all along. You can’t objectively establish your conception as the correct one here, because there isn’t a single objectively correct conception to establish.

But your example assumes what you’re trying to establish. You’re defining whether something is left or right entirely by the system it serves. That’s precisely the conception of left and right that we disagree on.

A redistributive policy doesn’t cease to be relatively left-wing simply because it operates within capitalism, any more than every policy within a socialist state automatically becomes left-wing.

I haven’t said they’re independent. Being able to distinguish and compare an element of a system doesn’t require pretending it exists independently of that system. If it did, you couldn’t meaningfully analyse individual policies or institutions at all?