Alright my Brothers And Sisters, the word has come down, and I doubt if many, if any of us are surprised. Once again the public option has been sacrificed, in the hopes of getting enough votes to pass Some kind of health care reform bill. And I can hear the sounds of outrage and betrayal from the ones out there who have more hope than sense. And I'm sure that there will be renewed calls to kill the bill etc. Well you know what? It's time to look to a new source for inspiration about how Progressives should proceed.
As the day progressed yesterday, I felt more and more like I was in a Star Trek episode--more TNG than TOS. For one thing, the Prime Directive seemed to bubble beneath the surface of everything I saw on CNN, which I had on most of the day.
Of course, the Prime Directive (non-interference with pre-space-faring civilizations, just in case any non-Terrrans unfamiliar with Star Trek are reading this) is virtually never brought up in Star Trek unless its going to bent, twisted or broken, and we've already interfered in Iran, big time, as America's #2 war criminal would say. But I couldn't help think, for example, how smart the dialogue about the Prime Directive was compared to the GOP yahoos yammering about the need to give Iran's hardliners all the "Death to America" ammo they might need.
I also recalled the underlying dynamic of most, if not all of those episodes, which always seemed to involve some form of conflict between the claims of a universal (or, at least galactic!) ideal and those of a particular (planetary) culture. Star Trek's premise always seemed to be that there was no "solution" to this conflict--the solution had to be worked out by the people themselves. Well, duh! Unless, of course, you're a Republican. Because learning this lesson, it seems to me, is really the key to extricating ourselves from the "war on terror."
When I was a teenager, I used to enjoy watching reruns of Star Trek. Not the new fangled remake from the 80s and 90s, but the original show from the late 1960s. I know, I know, for the non-initiated in such pastimes the cheese factor is high. But I can't help it. Pop culture has always had an insidious way of informing my experience.
I want to tell you about this one episode (for sticklers out there, it's an episode called "A Taste of Armageddon") in which the crew of the Enterprise arrives on a planet where two countries have been fighting a lengthy war. The weird thing is that the crew doesn't encounter a devastated and war-torn planet. You see, the warring groups had gone and made their war virtual. They'd set it up so that each attack and counterattack occurred via computer game. When each side lost in the game, they'd send a group of their citizens to die (for real) in a sort of sci-fi body-pulverizing gas chamber. There you go. No fuss, no muss, no mess.
Well, Captain Kirk is so upset by this he takes it upon himself to destroy this virtual war system, even though the two countries believe it's made their war more humane. Sure, they haven't had true peace or diplomacy for generations, but they believe they've been managing pretty well. But Kirk rails that this is exactly the problem: Because there's no real physical aspect of their war, they'll fight it forever. From Kirk's point of view, if you decide to be enemies, you have to deal with the real-world consequences - the death and loss and hurt that war actually causes. The key takeaway of the episode: It's irresponsible to sanitize war.
It's hard for a guy in his sixties who often poohpoohs the kinds of movies that show up for the masses as latent garbage to admit it, but I sat in a theater surrounded by teenagers watching STAR TREK this weekend. My wife wasn't interested and had work to do at school, so I went alone, which I rarely do.
As a followup and counterpoint to my diary last weekend, Republican Socialists of America, I'm republishing a diary I wrote back in 2005. As you can see, the "extreme" positions I sometimes seem to take on these pages are barely scratching the surface.
In the finale of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation [TNG], "The Neutral Zone,"Enterprise discovers a 20th century Earth craft with three frozen humans still alive in it. One of them is a super-wealthy businessman whose entire life was built around money making. He is eager to find out what's happened to his investments in the intervening centuries. What's happened is that the human race has evolved out of capitalism. There is no more money, which leaves the businessman bereft of a sense of purpose.
In the next Star Trek series, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, one of the continuing thematic concerns is the relationship between the socialist Federation and the ruthlessly capitalist (and patriarchal) Ferengi. In the end, the Ferengi undergo a dramatic transformation into a welfare state. The conclusion is inescapable: along with all its other left-liberal sentiments, Star Trek is solidly socialist. I'm proud to call myself a Star Trek socialist, and I'll explain more on the flip.
STATE BLOGS
