CrimsonSage

I wouldn't say it's imaginary. The value of the platform was the people who used it as it effectively functioned as s clearinghouse for news. The fact that a moron like musk didn't realize the value was the people and that by adding nazis and conspiracy theories he was destroying its value shows how much of a dipshit he really is. He basically bought a punch bowl, shit in it, and now is mad that no one wants his shit punch.

For a pre capitalist imperial project to exist you need a class/category of people, who are usual self conscious, who dominate a military hierarchy by using military power to extract value from a subaltern people or regions toward an imperial core. The system is circular in that the military hierarchy exists to extract the value upon which its existence is predicated. Also important is that the system is more or less depersonalized, bureaucratized, and expansionary. The ancient Greek west Asian empires are a perfect example of this where you even had ethnic divisions between the military class and the subordinate producing class. You really don't see this in the crusader states. These were feudal states with very little burecratc control which were dominated by customary reciprocal laws, duties, and obligations. While they were hierarchical between the productive and ruling class, there was amuch more limited differentiation within the ruling class, and a limited drive toward expansion. Additionally there was not an extraction toward an imperial core, taxes and. Appropriation remained local to serve the sustenance of the local nobility. Also interestingly the local Francis nobility quickly developed their own synthetic culture with their Muslim neighbors and would often ally with them against newcoming Christian crusaders from the west. So no the crusades to the levant were not really imperial projects. You could argue more strongly for the Baltic or Hispanic crusades, but even then I think the argument is weak for it. This matters because sloppy historical analysis can throw doubt on the entire project of leftist historiography this strength should be consistency and impersonal rigor as compared to a more personality focused liberal project.

I suspect some form of membership in the EU or Nato will be the consolation prize for the rump state that makes up ukraine.

I first read that as Daesh and was suprised lol.

I am assuming he is not actually calling for killing anyone, and this is the rightwingers mad that someone wants to take away more of their slaves or some such.

I can see how having a delivery service would be an important accommodation, but acting like door dash specifically is needed is fucked up. Like we already have a public service all throughout the country that does an incredible job deliving stuff and doesn't use slave labor, just have the fucking post office do it.

The reason why the US government does this shit is because absent conflict the rest of the world would rapidly catch up to the usa in productive capacity. Like building factories isn't complicated once you have the labor available. So the US basically just smashes as much shit around the world as it can because so long as something gets broke it doesn't ultimately matter. This is why empire is so schizophrenic, the random destruction is the point.

I don't think i understand is the original person she is responding to rightly complaining that door dash is not an employment option for disabled people? Is she disagreeing with that? I really don't understand.

If the argument is that 'not giving accommodations to disabled people so thet can work for door dash is wrong' then this is correct. On top of door dash just being an awful company to all workers in general, if they discriminate against disabled people that's extra shitty.

"Simple pilgrimages faced more of a threat from the sea and disease than from the Arabs"

Yes but those were accepted background things, the will of god. The disruption caused by the conquests in the east by the seljuk turks, not Arabs, was a very new, and controllable by human will, phenomenon.

"Everybody knows they were out for conques"

I am really sorry but the actual history of the crusades to the lavant doesn't support your supposition. It's also interesting that you cite my, and the current, scholarship as eurocentric when you are just parroting the old eurocentric view of the crusades as being this metaphysical clash of civilizations. The crusades to the Baltic and central Europe were definitely interesting, and part of a longer trend of germanic migration eastward that had been going on for centuries, and different from thise to the levant. The Reconqista could definitely be argued as an origin point for European colonial expansion, but thay was at best at the tail end of the crusading phenomenon, and many scholars would argue was a distinct social formation from the others. Sometimes a bird is a duck and sometimes it is a heron, just screaming loudly that it's the same because all birds are ducks doesn't make it true.

Yeah, I'll take the scurvy with a side of constipation and meat sweats.

Not really sure what you are arguing? The crusader kingdoms in the Levant were trying to secure holy sites for pilgrimage as their primary goal and function at the outset.

For me the fact that a majority of the big players in the crusades were already powerful individuals who effectively lost everything in their prosecution, exemplifies what you put so well.