TheQuartering [4/9/2021]
Star Trek has fallen so low they have completely lost the plot, and I thought Picard was bad…
Most Star Trek fans agree that the Federation would be a nice place to live. It’s got unlimited food, no wars, friendly holographic medical care on-demand, and regular classical music performances on deck 10. It’s great, in short, and hope springs eternal amongst Trek faithful that the future represented on-screen is a future we’ll one day achieve.
But how do we get there from here?
Will Nguyen is a fan who asks that question a lot.
“In the earth of the future, [we] eliminate poverty, hunger, homelessness, all the stuff that’s hard to still talk about; it’s paradise on earth,” Nguyen says, “How do you actually achieve a one-world government with no national borders, where we’ve eliminated poverty and war and hunger and disease? That’s a pretty significant gain, pretty significant achievement.”
That’s the thing: Star Trek is very detailed about the makeup of that utopian future, but not clear on the assembly. We’ve got the Bell Riots coming up in three years, give or take, and sometime in the next forty years we’ve got World War 3 to contend with (possibly featuring genetically-augmented supermen) and ultimately, first contact with an alien society before we’re off to the races. We’ve got the pieces but no way of fitting them together, like an IKEA dresser without an instruction manual — and we’ll probably need more than a complimentary Allen wrench to pull this off.
Will Nguyen thinks he has the answer: Communism.