Do conservatives get Star Trek? I have serious doubts.
I bought this up a decade ago when Senator Ted Cruz (R-Despised By His Own Wife) claimed that Captain Kirk would be a Republican. I allowed that it might be true, but James Tiberius Kirk would not be a Ted Cruz Republican. He’d be an Eisenhower Republican or a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. Honestly, in light of events over the past decade, since I wrote that blog post, I think that James Tiberius Kirk would actually be a Thaddeus Stevens Republican. The man who has no time for bigotry on his bridge (“Balance of Terror”) would have no patience whatsoever with ICE’s campaign of terror in Minneapolis.
But that’s not why I write.
Stephen Miller, Deputy White House Chief of Staff and white supremacist douche with anger management issues, did not enjoy the premiere of Starfleet Academy on Paramount Plus.
If the sight of three women sharing the screen, having a Bechdel Test passing conversation, one of those three women being Academy Award-winning actress (and goddess) Holly Hunter triggers Miller and drive him around the bend, then I really wonder if Miller understands Star Trek at all.
Miller, from all accounts, grew up watching Star Trek. He was, apparently, a fan of Deep Space Nine in the nineties. There’s a non-zero chance that he’s read some Star Trek novels. Perhaps he’s even read my own contribution to the mythos, “Make-Believe.” But what I mainly think about is this — the young Miller, Deep Space Nine fan, reading Armin Shimermann and David R. George III’s novel, The 34th Rule, and not getting it.
In The 34th Rule, the Bajorans open internment camps for Ferengi due to hostilities between Bajor and Ferenginar, and Quark and Rom are sent to one — Galitep, a notorious hellhole from Cardassia’s occupation of Bajor, under the command of a sadistic Bajoran officer, Colonel Mitra — where they are tortured. The Federation doesn’t see it as their problem — this is a matter for Bajor and Ferenginar — and it’s not until Sisko learns from Rom directly what the two brothers experienced at the hands of the Bajorans that Sisko sees the problem. Almost thirty years later, the mostly dialogue-free scene of Sisko and Rom sticks with me and moves me.
Anyone can commit crimes against humanity — or, in the case of Star Trek, crimes against sentient beings. The Bajorans, ostensibly a “good” people, were capable of committing atrocities in the name of ridding themselves of an unwanted and unwelcome race. The Bajoran failure to see, for want of a better word, the humanity in the Ferengi led them to commit atrocities.
Stephen Miller’s inability to see the humanity in immigrants has led him — and Kristi Noem, and Greg Bovino, and the organizations they lead — to have internment camps like Gallitep, to round up “undesirables” the Ferengi, to torture, to commit atrocities, to kill.
If Stephen Miller ever read The 34th Rule, he took all the wrong lessons from it.
And women in Star Trek drive him around the bend.
He’s spectacularly missed the point of Star Trek.
Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, Steve. Gene Roddenberry, whom I’m no fan of, would hate your guts. Also, he’d bang your wife like Elon Musk did.
Speaking of what’s going on in Minnesota, going through old screenshots I found this bit of wisdom by the writer and historian Jared Yates Sexton from March 2022. In light of ICE’s campaign of terror against the city, it’s prescient.
Sexton writes:
The same people who warned for years that the tyrannical government wanted to run your lives and was coming to get you is using the state to target gay and trans teens and their families.
Because it was always a cudgel for political power and those “principles” were never real.
The GOP isn’t for small government, fiscal or social responsibility, and they sure as hell aren’t pro-life.
It’s about control and power and profit at any cost. Everything else is a weapon.
The only thing that matters to the Right is white, patriarchal, wealthy supremacy. It’s about reestablishing hierarchies and subjugating everyone they hate and revile. The “principles” are talking point, think-tank tested rhetoric.
Sexton begins talking specifically about attacks on gay and trans teens — an issue that’s been in the Supreme Court this very month — but he expands out into a general point. If you’re white, male, and one of them, the United States is for you. If you don’t check those three boxes, they will do everything in their power to make your life hell. Cf., the military occupation of Washington, DC and the Gestapo tactics of the ICE occupation of Minneapolis.
I saw it pointed out today on BlueSky that, through three elections, Donald Trump won zero major cities and he hates them for it.
This will get worse. 🙁
GameStop, what is wrong with you?
I have played some Tomb Raider is my time, and, in my opinion, Sophie Turner looks more like Lara Croft than any previous actress did.
Does Turner have the super-pixelated, blocky, Cybertruck-shaped chest of the original PlayStation version of Lara? No, she does not, and her costume colors are realistic.
I’m not likely to watch Amazon Prime’s Tomb Raider series — I am not an Amazon Prime member — but I’m not going to pass judgment on Sophie Turner from a single image.
It looks to me like she has the right look, GameStop. Stop gatekeeping.