What is a Moral Person on Arrakis? (Dune)

In this episode of Consider the Ray Gun, Daniel is joined once again by James from Pex Lives to discuss Frank Herbert's Dune. They spend a lot of time on the experience of reading the book, as well as some of the structural issues, and go fairly deep on the way the politics of the world work. Also, the question of what, exactly a moral person in this universe would look like, which has obvious implications for the world in which we all live. 

Main Topic: Frank Herbert's Dune. Ambitious. Being Gene Mayes. Overall. Great not good. Not always. Warm blanket. Competence. Glossary. Ecology and philology. "Jihad." Islamophobia. Space white people. Oil and heroin. Time horizon. Democracy. Sympathetic. Callow Paul. Sequels and sex witches. Damn dirty Fremen. Twentieth-century Leto. Sympathetic Jessica. Gender essentialism. No misogyny. Alia. The mind and the world. Self-knowledge. Symbol versus referent. Moisture for the dead. Gay fat people are terrifying. Imperial politics. The Fremen as the win button. The psychology of personal combat. Physicality. The author by text. Barren versus hot. The ruling classes versus ordinary people. Is Herbert endorsing this? Critical of Muad'Dib? Call us HBO. Ruling classes murdering each other. Military tactics. MilSF. Structure. Skimmable. Alien. Extraneous George Washington. Rescuing the book from Herbert. Founding Fathers and moral equivalence. The Weirding Ways. The most moral man. What do we love? Wrapping Up.