Star Trek : Yesterday’s Progressivism
(www.youtube.com)
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It's an interesting video that touches on something I've always been curious about. Why 'both sides' have people who like Star Trek. The Left loves to claim Trek as pure progressivism and is deeply confused anytime they meet someone on the right who enjoys Star Trek. They genuinely cannot fathom why anyone right leaning would like it, as they view it as an extension of their own ideas.
It harkens back to that study that showed that the Right tends to understand both its own ideas and the Left's, while the Left understands its ideas but totally misses the mark when trying to describe the Right. They really do believe their mustache twirling caricature of the Right is what normal people on the right really believe about themselves and they are totally flummoxed anytime they're shown this isn't the case.
Star Trek isn't pure progressivism, it's 20th Century Americanism wearing a few progressive tokens as jewelry. Feral Historian points out that at the core, the Federation in Star Trek doesn't hate itself. It doesn't apologize for making colonies, it isn't seeking to ruin itself from within, it's a high-trust society composed of individuals that have bought into the high-trust of the society, and it's actually quite harsh towards individuals who break that trust or don't also buy in.
The Federation of Star Trek has 20th Century Western morals. The set dressing might be different, but the things they would view as 'wrong' are the things someone from 1960s America, or 1990s America would view as wrong. And that sort of rigid morality is something modern day leftists have been attacking for years. The modern* Left hates the idea of morality itself, which is why they tear down ever cultural more and taboo they can and replace them with twisted disgusting versions. Picard and Kirk and Sisko would be as disgusted by a nude adult male performing gay sex acts in front of children in a public parade as any of us.
The left does not understand their own ideas. They dont have an understanding of anything beyond social dynamics and power. They're dumb animals in human form.
This is why pointing out their hypocrisy doesn't work. Even demonstrate mathematically that you can't have a welfare state and mass migration and they respond by screeching racism as loud as they can.
Both sides liked classic Trek and Next Gen because the authors wrote both sides of the issues.
For example in The Pegasus, Picard upholds the treaty that prevents cloaking because the Federation gets trust and cooperation by honoring its word, while Pressman is totally correct that it's the stupidest agreement they ever made - the writers even name it the Treaty of Algeron, which is not coincidentally a single letter from Algernon, the mouse that was temporarily super smart but soon tragically lost all his intelligence. Just like how the treaty seemed smart at the time and by Pressman's time had become moronic.
In The Wounded, Picard turns a blind eye to all the evidence that the Kardasians are preparing to attack the Federation - the high energy shielding on cargo ships, the militarily strategic location, ships with no transponders - even though at the end we see that he only acted dumb on orders from Starfleet to preserve the peace when he doesn't offer reparations for the dead but rather a 'you fucked around and found out' message. The writers ensured we knew that the "rogue" captain was actually correct in everything he said: the Kardasians were arming, starfleet didn't know what was going on, the bureaucracy wouldn't act in time, lives were at stake, he did have to act now, he did prevent war (or at least delay it).
Both of these guys while officially portrayed as the 'bad guy' were also completely justified and correct from a utilitarian point of view. In new trek they would just be cartoon bad guys.
*Cardassians.
At least they aren't Kardashians like in Nu Trek.
We just call them Spoonheads, Spoonies, or Cardies around these parts
I was thinking about the Borg the other night. I was thinking they are analogous to communism in a way. So it's weird they'd be the existential threat they are to the federation. The federation seems to hate collectivism and applauds individualism. For all the talk of them being space communist, they don't act like it. I suspect a lot of the messiness in politics comes from writers that are champagne socialist