#Star Trek politics

[biblioflyer]

Star Trek and the Maquis: A Contest of Metaphors

This was inspired by an Ask many moons ago. I had the majority of this written within a week but then two hurricanes and a lot of wrangling over how to edit it coherently later, I'm just going to publish it as a series of rather messy and meandering essays.

The Maquis are a bit of an inkblot test for fans. While the narrative certainly goes to great efforts to skew us towards being sympathetic to them and aghast at the Federation's complicity in trying to squelch their uprising, I maintain there is room for valid disagreement on just how "in the wrong" the Federation was.

The inkblot test aspect of it comes down to how different members of the audience think about state level warfare and irregular warfare, aka insurgency, and maybe even terrorism.

For instance the Maquis, or at least Michael Eddington's faction, will wind up crossing the line that most people seem to think is the line between insurgency and terrorism: namely the indiscriminate targeting of civilians and noncombatants. Although a disturbing feature of debates about fictional and non-fictional peoples and movements can include some litigation of who is really a non-combatant and whether the moral protection that status confers can be stripped away by mitigating circumstances like being the beneficiary of state violence or being an accessory to atrocious acts without actually directly carrying them out.

At the same time, we also know that the Federation's attempt at a lasting peace with the Cardassians was doomed from the start: brazenly insincere on the part of the Cardassians, purchased by the Federation with a high price in moral credibility, and ends in the Cardassians welcoming the Dominion into the Alpha Quadrant. This line of thinking often ends in a presumption that since efforts to secure peace ultimately failed, those efforts were wholly a waste, preemptive violence should have been undertaken, and anyone who acted as if the failure of peace wasn't preordained was a blind fool.

Knowing where the story ends doesn't mean we can't still debate the Federation's degree of culpability for not intervening sooner to ensure that things don't reach a point where indiscriminate targeting of noncombatants by ex-Federation civilians is imminent.

A big part of what makes this an inkblot test is because it almost assuredly is a reflection on which analogies loom largest in the mind of the viewer. As it turns out, your preferred reference point for understanding war may strongly influence who you are sympathetic to and how you interpret the risks and ethics involved in any course of action chosen by the Federation and Maquis.

Understanding the Maquis

What I am going to do is, look at three main ideas that I think are most critical for seeing different sides of arguments around the Maquis, the Federation, the Cardassians and how each is understood by fans in terms of sympathy or malice, and in some instances, how they might be understood differently depending on how said fans process stories of state and irregular violence.

The social context of how different fans (and Trek writers) think of state level warfare and irregular warfare.

What was actually happening in the Trek universe around this time and to what degree the Maquis narrative encourages treating its storyline as existing outside of any other broader context.

The competing interests of the state to protect the many vs the rights of the few to defend their homes and way of life.

These are going to get elaborated on in subsequent posts, but very quickly here's a summary of the main points:

Social Context

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, this has become a dominant metaphor for understanding the Federation - Cardassian relationship. Suffice to say, those for whom this metaphor has the most power understand this as an unambiguous contest of moral systems wherein the Federation is guilty of abdicating responsibility for victims of an expansionist autocracy with numerous atrocities on its record and no extenuating circumstances that reduce the magnitude of the Federation's guilt.

Prior to 2022, it is my observation that several other metaphors might have applied: the Kurdish resistance to ISIL (another metaphor that strongly favors the Maquis and condemns the Federation), the Afghan Mujahideen (a cautionary tale in which the nurturing of a sympathetic resistance movement facing oppression has unintended consequences, i.e. 9/11), and finally Cold War dovishness. Cold War dovishness I would describe as not so pacifistic as to be unwilling to engage in any amount of armed conflict but a deep wariness of it. This is an idea that conflicts between a great power and a lesser may be much more challenging than expected, pose escalation risks that could become existential, and even if carefully managed the conflict may have second and tertiary consequences that neutralize, even harm the agenda of the greater power: i.e. "blowback."

I bring this guy up a lot, but I do think there was an episode or two where Tomalak might have been the Romulan Vasily Arkhipov. The Soviet officer who arguably saved the world by defying standing orders to use nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile Crisis when certain conditions were met. I bring up Arkhipov a lot, along with Stanislav Petrov (a second Russian who may have saved the world) because I think he's incredibly important to understanding how Pre-Dominion War Trek understood state level conflict and why a power like the Federation that constantly signals about how important it thinks universal sentient rights are might sign away some inhabited planets to move down a few steps on the escalation ladder.

Astropolitical Context

The careful viewer recognizes that the Cardassians are far from the only problem the Federation has and thus, while we are not explicitly reminded of these issues, they are important context for the Federation choosing a bad peace over waging what many fans perceive to be a virtuous and largely consequence free war. After signing the peace treaty with the Cardassians, these problems are also likely explanations for why the Federation seems to dither and pursue largely diplomatic solutions to the Maquis crisis with the Cardassians rather than throwing its weight around or even directly siding with the Maquis.

The Borg are a known unknown: they are an existential threat if they choose to be, the Federation lost more ships in one battle than had ever been previously mentioned as being in one place at one time in Trek history. We can massage this to fit with later canon by assuming the Borg were, to borrow an Ian Banks term, an "Outside Context Problem." It had been a while since some inscrutable, unstoppable weird alien thing had bypassed every patrol and defensive position to menace Sol directly (although there was that time where it happened twice in the span of a decade) and the Federation had grown so dramatically that it really couldn't afford to have more than forty ships within 48 hours notice to cover Sol, including ships just fitting out, under refit, or in ready reserve.

The Klingons fought a civil war that ultimately exposed ties between the Romulans and the now disgraced, but previously deeply influential Duras Family. Schisms like that don't necessarily heal cleanly or swiftly. The allies of the Duras were shamed and likely had to pay lip service to unity, but they almost certainly had ideological and pragmatic reasons for aligning with the Duras, a disdain for the Khitomer Accords being among them.

The Romulans are another known unknown. They certainly want the Federation to think that they're willing to risk an existential conflict over particular disputes but play their actual motives close to the vest. The fact that these conflicts don't actually spiral into war at least seems to strongly suggest that the Romulans are paranoid, not suicidal, and that their imperialism is tempered by pragmatism. We're never privy to any info dumps on Starfleet's intelligence assessments about their relative power compared to the Federation, but logically even a weak Romulan Star Empire is capable of a lot of mischief up to and including inflicting massive civilian casualties if it desires.

I'm open to correction on this if someone with a more recent engagement with the Maquis arc thinks I'm wrong, but it's my contention that very little of what I just wrote found its way into the foreground as part of the Federation's rationale for accepting a peace with the Cardassians. By foreground I mean cited as reasons for the peace or for siding against the Maquis by Federation characters.

I don't think making peace with an authoritarian regime is the sole reason why the Federation gets held up as an example of why the Federation is a more cynical and "US-coded" actor than it likes to pretend, but even I was surprised at just how exculpatory the broader context is. I expected to wage a rhetorical fight to defend peace on its own merits and wound up being shocked at how during the same period the Federation is trying to maintain the peace with the Cardassians, how many near misses the Federation has with open war with powers that had the potential to decisively win against the Federation, and in the case of the Borg, not just subjugate but utterly annihilate the Federation.

Which many, whose needs?

The argument you very rarely see these days, especially in a post 9/11, post Russian invasion of Ukraine world is that the Federation should have just removed the settlers and called it a day. The irony here is that from a strictly utilitarian, harm reduction standpoint this might actually be the right move.

However, two extremely valid critiques are that this is rooted in presentism: we can argue that there are reasons to suspect the peace with the Cardassians isn't worth the isolinear chips its encoded on but the principle actors can't know for sure in the moment it's all going to be pointless.

It also flies in the face of Trek's ethos that, while consequentialism is highly important, it's tempered by the notion that virtue ethics has its role to play as well. That is to say that some actions are just or unjust, good or bad simply because they are. Thus I cannot think of a lot that would be less Star Trek than a forced relocation of people from their homes. Of course one might also say that it's not especially noble to risk interstellar war and billions of lives over attachment to said homes.

Whether the same Star Trek ethos demands that these people be protected is a nastier business that circles back to what metaphor we use to think about state and irregular warfare in Star Trek but also whether we as fans lean more towards the virtue ethics side of the equation or the consequentialist side.

What makes the Maquis interesting is that, like so much of DS9, the writers refused to provide the sort of easy, positive sum solution that Trek, or at least TNG, was/is known for. There is no scenario in which risks are not undertaken. No scenario in which an empathetic being is going to walk away with a clean conscience. One way or another, either the safety of the settlers is being used as a commodity, their rights revoked entirely, or the other trillion odd beings in the Federation are asked to be in solidarity with the few and risk everything.

Up next: Storytelling insurgency in Star Trek

[ribombeee]

[beggars-opera]

ALRIGHT LADS

WHO'S READY FOR

[animentality]

[vaguely-concerned]

sisko: *sigh* against my will and for complicated political reasons I am sent to save your sorry cardassian ass yet again. just get in the fucking car already pls

gul dukat: there's a hidden meaning in that! the usurper of terok nor obviously desires me carnally

[notfernintheslighest]

favorite part of star trek the original series is seeing Spock make an ok joke that everyone laughs at the appropriate amount, except for Jim, who laughs way too long. like the only reason for him to laugh that long is to stroke Spock’s ego enough that he’ll get to stroke something else too.

[spirk-trek]

Twin Destiny Fanzine | Ann Crouch, 1983 More Spock in t-shirts by Ann Crouch here and here!

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

i do think it's really interesting to compare the ways Star Trek and Doctor Who succeed and fail as pieces of progressive media because they almost have the opposite problem.

both of the shows are progressive, let's make that clear. while there are exceptions, both shows and worlds consistently critique capitalism, value compassion, solve problems without violence, and at least try to be diverse. there will always be individual episodes (and even eras/arcs) that contradict those values but in general, they are progressive compared to your average procedural or whatnot. but they, by the very nature of their premise, often fail to live up to fully realizing those progressive values. and yes, individual instances of racism or misogyny or any type of bigotry is a product of the bigotry of the writers/creators, but Star Trek and Doctor Who ultimately fail and will always fail to fully embody progressivism.

Star Trek is trapped in its own system of the Federation & Starfleet. for any of the shows to work, we the audience have to believe that the Federation is almost always a good & benevolent force and while criticisms of it are made, those criticisms are the exception and not the rule. the Federation/Starfleet can be criticized but at the end of the story, we must reaffirm that our characters are still good people and it's individual corruption that's the problem. the system can be portrayed as flawed but it must always be better than the alternative. if there is a Star Trek show that would truly dig far enough into how the Federation is a product of imperialism and how the nature of exploring & going where no one has gone before is inherently rooted in racism & orientalism then the franchise would collapse because nearly everything to this point relies on the belief in that a fundamentally good utopian system is possible.

now there's Doctor Who. Doctor Who has a quite different premise in that it is never rooted to one place or time the way Star Trek is attached to Starfleet/the Federation. (there could be an argument that Doctor Who is ultimately rooted in Britain but despite the 2005 series and the UNIT era in classic who, there are large swathes of classic who and the EU that never visit Britain. it's been made an important part of the show (as the show is an important part of British culture) but it's not inherent to the basic premise.) however, because Doctor Who is focused on traveling and seeing the wonders of the universe, its premise essentially becomes "some people turn up to fix a problem and then disappear". again, there are exceptions to this (especially in early classic who), but the formula of the show is almost trapped in the belief of individual action and power to solve systemic problems which... is not how most problems or solutions behave in reality. and just as Star Trek can criticize the Federation but must ultimately forgive it, Doctor Who can criticize the Doctor and portray them as flawed but must still reaffirm their status as a hero.

so we have Star Trek too caught up in its own systems to be able to critique them and Doctor Who too focused on running to portray how complex, long term solutions are needed to solve deeply entrenched problems.

and honestly... i don't think either of these are bad. they're simply the limitations of the shows as they exist and it would be far more worthwhile to develop new premises & find other media that incorporate those types of leftist political values from the start than to try to graft them onto 60 year old media franchises and pretend like they've always been there.

and they do serve a purpose! Star Trek might not be able to adequately portray the flaws of a system but it does give you hope for a better utopian future where people are taken care of and allowed to live however they choose, where there's infinite diversity in infinite combinations. Doctor Who might not be able to portray the complicated solutions to complicated problems that we face today but it tells you that every life matters, that kindness is the most important quality, and that everyone can make a difference in some way.

[ireallyamabear]

The choice to put Una Chin-Reily on a Starfleet recruitment poster in the late 2370s seems a nod to the extraordinary person she is and her exemplary service, but Boimler’s enthusiasm for her as a personal hero cannot mask the fact of what Starfleet execs are really doing here: while it is Starfleet tradition to honour esteemed personnel from its centuries of history, we have to look at the poster as a product of its time: it seems clear that, shortly after the devastating death toll and the rapid militarisation of the Dominion War, putting a prominent figure of the Great Exploration Age - and notedly someone who had not served in the Klingon War - as the poster person for Starfleet is an indictment that contemporary young people of the Federation are not drawn to the service as it is in their time anymore.

Critically, Starfleet has to use somebody from a 120 years ago, a timeframe that would lap generations of even especially long lived member species like Vulcans or Denobulans, to attract new recruits. Boimler says himself that seeing Una as a representative and her motto - “Ad astra per aspera” was: “Uh, it was a really big reason why I joined.” Clearly there is a wealth of recognisable Starfleet officers from 2370 and onwards, but their entanglement in the Dominion War, or at least in the Borg threat makes them unsuitable as role models for people like Boimler who cannot help but associate these contemporaries with the horrors of war and intergalactic conflict. Thus, the retreat to a “safe” historical narrative, with Starfleet still being about peaceful exploration reflects the growing divide between the realities of a colonised galaxy, the ongoing need of new bodies to fill the posts on all those ships and space stations and the aspirations and values of young people today. In this essay I will question whether Starfleet can keep its promise of scientific integrity in the face of growing political unrest in the UFP and ask what “Number One” herself would have thought about-

[khawla-gfm2]

📰Khawla's Family Campaign Update: 80📰

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If 2,750 people donated $20 the fundraiser would reach it's set goal!

Please consider donating even just $5, $10, or $20 to help the fundraiser further along. And remember that reblogging/sharing to reach more people can help a lot!

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[biblioflyer]

Different Treks, Different Ethos? 

Is there authentic and valid disagreement between fans adjacent to the dumpster fires?

This is part of a series analyzing the finale of Discovery and the conflict between different aspects of the Star Trek fandom. This is in part inspired by and a reaction to a conversation between Andrew Heaton and Tim Shandefur on the Political Orphanage podcast. For more like this, use the Star Trek ethics tag.

I recently listened to a discussion between Andrew Heaton and Tim Sandefur on the Political Orphanage about the Politics of Star Trek, a couple of people I don’t particularly have a lot in common with except for a love of Star Trek. That being the case, it was an interesting exercise in seeing the franchise through someone else’s eyes. It was disorienting but interesting. 

Heaton displayed an impressive degree of understanding of views he may or may not share, but treats them with seriousness. I came away feeling like Sandefur in particular was caricaturing convictions he didn’t share and generally being deeply unfair, but it’s a viewpoint worth unpacking because I see variations on his arguments all over the place.

Essentially Sandefur draws a line between the Cold War liberalism of The Original Series and Star Trek The Next Generation, which he characterizes as “New Left”, maybe even “Post Modernist.” I’m fuzzy on whether he used the second term but I suspect he probably wouldn’t disagree given what I came to believe his definition of Post Modernist would be.

I know you may be already cringing because I brought up one of the biggest snarl worlds and thought terminating cliches in social discourse. I want to frontload this by saying that I think this is interesting, and even that it is probably reflective of a very real division in Trek fandom, not that I think Sandefur’s interpretation is fair minded or even accurate. He does get caught misremembering (a cynic might say butchering) Trek canon to make a point, but then who doesn’t have a tendency to emphasize the parts of the setting that affirm our convictions?

Kirkism

In Sandefur’s telling, the Cold War Liberalism of Kirk emphasizes equity, justice, intellectualism, is fundamentally optimistic about technology, is broadly positive about Western coded institutions and values, is prideful of its achievements, disdainful of ignorance (as defined by being scientifically backward or culturally illiberal), and perhaps most controversially: the Kirkian tradition is interventionist.

Kirk does not stop to ponder what the collateral damage will be from liberating the locals from an AI god before destroying said god. 

Kirk is mournful but resolute when it comes to arming a preindustrial people he is sympathetic to in order to ensure they are more evenly matched with a tribe the Klingons are arming. At no point does Kirk stop to interrogate what the gender, sexual, racial, religious, or political norms of said tribe are: it is enough that the tribe he is friendly with will at least be subjugated if not annihilated wholesale if Starfleet doesn’t arm them.

Kirk would not, and quite literally has not, hesitated to punch Nazis up to and including possibly causing an interstellar incident. Incidentally, in a sign the metapolitics of Star Trek may be swinging back to the Kirkian, Strange New Worlds even affirms that Kirk’s aggressiveness during the events of “The Balance of Terror” is the correct posture. Aggressively confronting an aggressor is depicted as essential for preventing a devastating interstellar war with the Romulans. 

I’m less persuaded about Burnham having been in the right with regards to “The Vulcan Hello” and the need to respond aggressively to the Klingons. There are a lot of variables between Shenzou opening hailing frequencies and T’kuvma becoming a martyr so I accept there is a strong argument for Burnham (and by extension, the “Kirkian tradition”) having been correct here.

So far, so interesting right? I would wager that your average social justice minded Trekkie is not actually finding fault with all of this if they weren’t immediately put off by the lack of severe criticism for Western values and institutions.

Kirk’s astropolitics meanwhile are complex. I would imagine a lot of us are uncomfortable with the idea of giving advanced weaponry to a preindustrial society no questions asked, but at the same time we don’t necessarily like the idea of them simply being wiped out. Do note that while the episode to my recollection presents this as a binary: arming or extinction, it is implicitly a trinary choice, it's just that the third option is really, really bad. That third option being directly interdicting weapon supplies from the Klingons and risking an interstellar war.

As far as the Discovery finale is concerned, the big thing is the techno optimism of TOS. Scientific progress is not unquestioned but it is generally portrayed as a positive.

There are certain verboten technologies in the TOS morality. Genetic engineering of humans to explicitly improve their physical and mental prowess is viewed as inevitably flinging the door wide open to fascism due to the way it creates “superior beings with superior ambition.” Likewise, the setting seems vaguely hostile to artificial intelligence. The common theme seems to be that these are crypto-illiberal technologies that seem highly likely to result in the subjugation of humans to amoral actors.

Yet when it comes to most other things, there’s rarely much in the way of introspection about whether sentient beings (I’m probably going to end up saying humanity a lot just for simplicity, which I know Azetbur would take me to task for due to its xenocentrism) have a right to “play God” or to use this or that technology responsibly. McCoy is often curmudgeonly but a lot of the time it seems like he’s written to be a silly luddite for Spock and Kirk to dunk on. Likewise McCoy is often skewered for his excitability by Spock, whom he regards as cold and amoral.

Next: Picardism and why what you would do to protect your favorite bar may not well advised for when nuclear weapons are involved.

[pintadorartist]

Bill H.R. 9495, the Non-Profit Killer, is heading to the Senate

Bill H.R. 9495, aka the "Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act" was meant to protect US Hostages from tax penalties; the bill received an add-on that would give the Treasury Secretary the power to strip any non-profit of their tax-exempt status based on the idea that the nonprofit is a "terrorist supporting" organization, all without due process or a justification.

This would give the upcoming Trump administration the power to kill any non-profit org, from AO3 to the ACLU. Even local nonprofits and independent news sources could be stripped of their status and be unable to receive funding to stay open, all because they had different views than the government.

Unfortunately, the bill passed the House and is headed towards the Senate. So I ask you all to find your Senator and then call, email, fax them a lot of times, and make as much noise as possible to tell them to vote no. I also ask you to do the same to these Democrat Senate leaders as well:

Chuck Schumer:

Phone: (202) 224-6542

Fax: (202) 228-3027

Dick Durbin:

Phone: 202-224-2152

Debbie Stabenow:

Phone:(202) 224-4822

Elizabeth Warren:

Phone: (202) 224-4543

Mark R. Warner:

Phone: 202-224-2023

Amy Klobuchar:

Phone: 202-224-3244

Fax: 202-228-2186

Bernie Sanders:

Phone: 202-224-5141 Fax: 202-228-0776

Catherine Cortez Masto:

Phone: (202) 224-3542

Joe Manchin:

Phone: 202-224-3954 Fax: 202-228-0002

Cory A. Booker:

Phone: (202) 224-3224

Fax: (202) 224-8378

Tammy Baldwin:

Phone: (202) 224-5653

Brian Schatz:

Phone: (202) 224-3934

Here are some tools:

Find your Senator:

Or you can call the Congressional switchboard today and ask to be connected with each of your Senators’ offices. Demand they vote against this bill: (202) 224-3121

Fax tool:

Here are some call scripts that you can use as fax and email as well:

If you have a Democrat Senator, you can use this script:

"I am calling Senator [THEIR LAST NAME] as a constituent to urge them to vote against the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, when it comes to the Senate floor. This bill would give the Treasury the power to kill non-profit organizations without evidence, and will be used as a sledge hammer to destroy any organization that speaks out against the incoming President’s agenda. No matter who was in power, this bill would be authoritarian and ripe for abuse. Handing this power to a President known to be vindictive, and who has promised to be a “day one” dictator, would be a failure of congressional leadership. Please share my thoughts with the Senator, urging them to vote against this dangerous legislation. Thank you"

If you have a Republican Senator, you can use this script:

"I am calling Senator [THEIR LAST NAME] as a constituent to urge them to vote against the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, when it comes to the Senate floor. This bill would give the Treasury the power to kill non-profit organizations without evidence, and will be used as a sledge hammer to destroy any organization that speaks out against the incoming President’s agenda. No matter who was in power, this bill would violate our First Amendment Rights. Handing this power to the Government would be a failure of congressional leadership. Please share my thoughts with the Senator, urging them to vote against this dangerous legislation. Thank you"

And I also urge you to sign these petitions/letters as well:

And again, please keep up the pressure, make your voices heard, continue to leave messages to your representatives and make sure they hear you either through voicemail, call, etc.

[spocksocksrock]

[artemis-pendragon]

Happy Putin officially declares war with NATO canon Spirk minisode Trump making a Fox News host a member of the Federal cabinet day I guess

[mysharona1987]

[trek-tracks]

My theory on how it went down