It's hardly Marxist to note that slavery and capitalism are compatible, although he may have been the first to explicitly do so. Capitalism isn't special in tha

It's hardly Marxist to note that slavery and capitalism are compatible, although he may have been the first to explicitly do so. Capitalism isn't special in that regard; slavery can exist, and in various forms has existed, under every economic system known to man. Chattel slavery appears to work especially well with capitalism, as indeed has been amply demonstrated in US history, so that was what I talked about. Granted, any such discussion omits the moral enormity inherent in any form of slavery. Economic discussions are like that. I'll grant you that the moral and economic dimensions of the slavery-and-capitalism question tend not to be too clearly separated in the public discourse of the moment, but that neither surprises nor concerns me. As I mentioned earlier, what you misidentify as "resurgent Marxism" is in fact a reaction to the totally untrammeled capitalism I called by the name "Reaganism". Considering the myriad and grievous harms that system has produced in four short decades, and considering also that that system's own proponents happily describe it just as "capitalism" without the courtesy of such qualifiers as I use, whatever misidentification or misblame it may receive seems to me well earned. Besides, it's not as if counting slavery among the crimes of Reaganism is in any way erroneous. Have you seen the US prison system? To the rest, it should be hardly a surprise to anyone that there were Soviet agents in the US government at any point from about the early 1930s through the late 80s. Just like there were US agents in the Soviet government. And Chinese agents in both, and vice versa, and so on. The existence of espionage, and the existence of a vast Red conspiracy of subversion on a national and generational scale, are in no way the same thing, and to argue from one to the other requires a good deal more substantiation than either you or Tailgunner Joe appear inclined or indeed able to provide. Granted, one can sometimes use the former to frighten uninformed people into believing in the latter, despite a total inability to demonstrate that the latter actually exists. You seem to want to talk about gaslighting. Has it occurred to you that, unlike merely having people argue that you're wrong about something, this sort of specious, fear-based deception may in fact qualify as such? Btw, I just spent a little while poking around Newsmax, something I hadn't previously done since the Bush administration. I don't know whether you really do read a lot of that stuff, but if you do, maybe seriously consider cutting back, and replacing at least some of it with something from outside the filter bubble it appears strongly designed to create and enforce. Or, I don't know, use an ad blocker at least? If you're going to let that stuff monopolize your brain and your political philosophy, I'd at least like to think you're doing it for its own sake, rather than so that somebody can make money off of you.