I did not miss those things—they are obvious plot points and Dune in general is not subtle about anything. Herbert is a ham-fisted writer. My point is that these things are superficial. As I explained, “The novels follow the Atreideses, the story is from their POV, the books are totally thoroughly and sincerely into how smart and cool they are and what amazing powers they have, etc etc. Herbert at some point realized there were obvious problems with such a project, and tried to figure a way out for himself and his readers, but its entirely clear who the books think is actually interesting, deserving of a story, etc.”
The point is that the book plots out all these disasters, but ultimately, is completely enraptured by its protagonists (Paul, Leto II), just like every teenager who reads the books. They’re really smart and cool and have special powers! The fact that the novels are so interested in the psychological inner worlds of these characters tells you where its affections lie. Why isn’t Dune a story told from the Fremen point of view? It totally could have been? Well because it implicitly believes the Fremen, the colonial subjects, the undifferentiated savage hoards are boring. That’s it. It has the same bias as basically all the other contact narratives in Western lit.
Oh brother lol. “New York is so significant that it’s really a character itself 
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