I prefer to rewatch older movies like the Indiana Jones Trilogy (if it was made now Indy would be a cuck no doubt), Star Wars OT, The Godfather, Heat etc. not to mention watch shows like The Sopranos and Stargate SG-1 or play games like GTA IV, The Witcher 2 Mass Effect 2 etc.
All the shit from the past 6+ years or so has been far left propaganda and anti white men. I'm sick of smug bitchy "strong" female characters, lgbt+ degeneracy everywhere and way too many black characters.
They have butchered so many iconic franchises its just depressing
Star Trek has an interesting dynamic.
It is "conservative" in the sense that the main characters have all sworn an oath to defend the Federation, and do so (and we see them do it against enemies both foreign and domestic). And they gatekeep the hell out of their society both in terms of who they interact with and who they admit into the Federation.
It is "liberal" in that Federation society itself is multi-ethnic and somewhat multi-cultural (within their gatekeeping constraints). Though the fact that they gatekeep their culture is itself conservative to modern standards.
It is "leftist" in how it allocates scarce resources (which do exist in-universe: I reject arguments that it is a "post-scarcity" society).
Agreed 100% Dilithium ore still needs to be mined and processed. There is also the instances of Cisco saying theres nothing better than freshly grown crop to cook with as Replicators are just a Matter / Energy Converter and the resequenced molicules are actually the food youre eating (think tofu flavoured to taste like beef, just isnt the same)
Dont even get me started on how little information we have on Star Trek atmospheric processors and how they manage to keep a ship for of 1000+ (Enterprise D) breathing the same oxygen every second :P
In both the original and Next Generation you often saw the flaws of the Federation on outskirt worlds. Everything was great and peachy in well maintained space, but the actual mining operations and poorer systems were plagued by bandits and renegades.
I remember one episode, I forget the name, but it was heavily implied that the Klingons were framing people for fake crimes to send them to distant Dilithium mines.
Yeah the replicator question is interesting too, because you get the sense they're just a futuristic version of an MRE. Except the vast majority of the population (including on Earth) eats replicated food, so is everyone just eating MRE food all the time and don't know any better? That just makes their society seem even worse.
I've heard another argument which is "the food itself is high-quality but always tastes exactly the same". But I'm not sold on that argument because they seem to have a good variety in their menu, at least in peacetime. And you never see anyone disappointed at a "real" meal not being as good as a replicated one, but you frequently see the opposite.
There was an episode of next generation with Scotty in it where he orders a scotch and complains about the taste, don't see why the replicator food wouldn't be the same.
That's because the scotch was made with "synthehol" rather than real alcohol, not because it was replicated.
I would guess that most probably eat replicated food for convenience, but there are alternatives that might actually be better.
The average Federation colonist appears to be a farmer, so there are many that are raising crops or animals for food. Picard's family has the vineyard, showing that farming and real food production still happens on Earth.
There are also restaurants that serve only real food, like the one run by Sisko's father. Nog visits there because they have live worms to eat.
O'Brien says that his mother only cooked real food, and I believe Keiko was growing crops on DS9, which Sisko also used to cook. Similar with Kes growing crops and Neelix cooking it on Voyager, although they had a shortage of matter for the replicator, which may indicate that the replicator is actually expensive to use and really is just about convenience.
We also see that Klingons are probably eating real food as they're eating live or raw animals or meat, which a replicator can't make. They go hunting when they're on a planet. There was also the Klingon restaurant on DS9 that appeared to serve real food, and Dax talks about getting in shipments of Klingon food for Martok's birthday. However, the crew of that station mostly seems to go to the Replimat or Quark's, which I assume is faster due to using replicators.
As for quality of replicated food, there are quotes of people saying its good, but others saying its not the same, so I assume its acceptable but noticably different and some people have a preference for natural food while others are happy to eat processed food all the time, as is true today.
It's some scifi TV show where fuses somehow don't exist.
I don't expect much consistency.
Well said. I also don't believe, contrary to the popular leftist opinion, that the Federation is post-scarcity or even post-currency or post-capitalism, because there's many instances where they seem to not be and both the Federation and its members are engaging in trade and business. My head-canon on this is that they've made common goods on Earth cheap enough to produce that they're essentially free, so no one there "wants" for anything, but they haven't literally done away with all trade. Essentially, a technological rather than a governmental solution to poverty.
Some other things that I see as probably right-wing in it:
An argument can be made that the Prime Directive is gatekeeping and maybe even racist, because it advocates not sharing technology with or helping any society that hasn't reached a certain level of technology already, in most circumstances. There are a few instances where they intervene to stop extinction-type events, but mostly their policy is to stay away and let nature take its course where they can.
Although the Federation is presented as post-racial at least regarding people from Earth, they also openly discriminate in their postings based upon racial differences between different humanoids to some degree. E.g. when Kirk asks to replace Spock with another Vulcan; many crews are mostly from Earth, but there are crews that are mostly or entirely Vulcan, as seen in DS9; Worf likely receives his postings based upon being a Klingon, same with Troi and others, etc. Essentially, the Federation seems to acknowledge that there are different strengths for different people and to choose crew compositions accordingly, rather than treating all as being literally equal in all ways or doing some kind of affirmative action.
Oh, I just happened to think of one other thing, re: if the Federation is multi-cultural.
There was that time that Sisko yelled at Worf (IIRC) that as a Starfleet member you must adapt to Starfleet culture and can't just do something because it's part of your race's culture (forgot the exact quote but I think this was in the episode where Worf's brother requests an honor-killing).
The Federation has limited tolerance for other cultures, but doesn't ease its own standards to accommodate them, which is how America used to be before the current generation of leftists gained power.