this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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the_dunk_tank

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It's the dunk tank.

This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if Density's community considers prison labor to be slavery?

Or "sweatshops" around the world where people get paid basically nothing to work?

Is it ok if a feudal lord owns land and forces the peasants to pay a yearly rent in the form of sugarcane otherwise they are evicted and face starvation, homelessness, forced prostitution, etc.?

I mean none of these meet certain definitions of slavery. They might not meet the definition Americans associate with slavery (chattel slavery). But no reasonable person can argue this is a just and good system. Even the United States' official descriptions of Batista's Cuba are damning. They just didn't give a shit because he cut the US capitalists and politicians in on the exploitation. Castro ended the exploitation and told the US to go fuck themselves.

I don't understand the argument they want to make. Would they prefer "some Cuban descendants only hated Castro because he took their grandparents' serfs away." Oh, ok.

This is like the people who try to quibble over the word Nazi vs fascist. Does it really matter that much in colloquial speech or are you desperately trying to reach for something to pretend that Batista wasn't actually that bad, that Castro and the Cuban revolutionaries were bad or worse than Batista? Because it absolutely sounds like the latter point.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Even the United States' official descriptions of Batista's Cuba are damning.

if you happen to have a link on hand, where can I find these?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I may have misremembered the quote from Schlesinger to JFK. I don't remember if he was recounting Batista's Cuba to Kennedy or just generally for historical reasons. Also he was an official in the administration, so it isn't fair to say this was the official description necessarily, although his letters are now published on the CIA site, JFK's library site, etc. If you read through them it's pretty clear JFK's aides knew how shit it was under Batista, but it was unfair for me to call it "official" since it's not like JFK had Schlesinger out on TV telling everyone that Batista sucked. I should've said "internal descriptions" within the Kennedy administration.

But you can google Arthur Schlesinger and see what he said to JFK at the time of the bay of pigs. A lot of it (including from the CIA, etc.) is pure cartoon evil. It is funny how the CIA basically just says "communism looks really appealing! How the fuck do we explain to Americans that this is bad actually?!" in every document