Glory Be to God in the Highest…
and on earth peace, good will toward all. … Or maybe not. Here is Mike Potemra, at The Corner:
I have over the past couple of months been watching DVDs of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show I missed completely in its run of 1987 to 1994; and I confess myself amazed that so many conservatives are fond of it. Its messages are unabashedly liberal ones of the early post-Cold War era – peace, tolerance, due process, progress (as opposed to skepticism about human perfectibility).
Kevin Drum observes:
You know, conservatives don’t usually confess straight up to finding peace, tolerance, due process, and progress so disagreeable. But I guess they slip up every once in a while.
Steve Benen adds:
But it doesn’t end there. Potemra, hoping to understand why conservatives enjoy a show that embraces wacky concepts like due process, asked some National Review colleagues about it. The answer, apparently, is that the right appreciates the “toughness” of Jean-Luc Picard, portrayed as “a moral hardass,” who offers viewers a “compelling portrait of ethical uprightness.”
But if Picard is both a liberal and a “moral hardass,” modeling “ethical uprightness” for television viewers, doesn’t that mean…. (emphasis is mine)
… that being an ethically upright and generally virtuous person is, however surprising this result may be, consistent with being tolerant, peace-loving, even with upholding due process[?]
Ohhhh, no! I think I need a little Christmas, right this very minute. Make mine peaceful and upright.
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22 Responses to “Glory Be to God in the Highest…”
We conservatives appreciate concepts like “peace” and “tolerance” portrayed in science fiction because it reminds us how absurd it is to pursue these concepts, just as it is absurd to pursue hyperdrive and transporter beams, and therefore we should continue to promote war, hate, and bigotry as the pinnacle of human virtue.
(I assume it's clear to most people that the above is sarcasm, meant to point out the absurdity of liberals pondering why conservatives like a show that portrays principles that liberals accuse conservatives of hating.)
Perhaps what the conservatives enjoy, besides Patrick Stewart's Shakespearean performances and Counselor Cleavage's manifest charms, is watching liberals being mocked.
In the typical episode the characters encounter a problem, wring their hands that the available solutions might offend someone, and then around the 50-minute mark wish it away by remembering they can reverse the polarity on the inertial dampeners or whatever, and all ends well. They never confront the moral dilemma they postulated, nothing ever really happens, there are no consequences, and the characters' fetish for equality and fairness is rewarded. What conservative wouldn't enjoy watching liberal values pay off thanks to plot devices available only in fantasy land?
When there is order, it is much easier for leadership to make effective decisions. Disorder weakens leadership. Weak leadership leads to instability. Instability leads to slaughter. There is a lot to be said for order, even at the expense of liberty.
Picard lives in a structured military environment, surrounded by competent advisors that are leaders in their own right, making decision making very effective.
There is no correlation between Star Trek and our body politic.
Wow, TNG on TMV! I loved the original as a kid, and my own kids know most episodes backwards and forwards. Jean-Luc Picard was the unlikely hero whose first choice was his brain, not his brawn, since he didn't have much. The politics on the show seem Democratic — lots of diplomacy first, only use the phasers when all other paths have been exhausted. I suppose someone has written a Ph.D. thesis on it by now.
“The politics on the show seem Democratic”
The original Star Trek (the real series) was conventional, Republican (albeit with so much positivism and ambition some might argue it was Rockefeller Republican — we didn't tolerate bigotry against foreigners accepted into the Federation, like Spock, remember). My younger brother had it pegged when he was a kid. The Federation is NATO — the good guys, democratic (little D), lawful, peaceful, advocating the Western (presumed) and UN ideal way of life. But we'll fight (as good Republicans) to defend ourselves and our interests, and while we don't interfere, we do give good conventional advice (such as telling gangsters they need to run their planet more like a B U S I N E S S ). Meanwhile, our adversaries, the Klingon Empire, are obviously the Russians and evil empire, militaristic — they even wear red. (Their gibberish language is like Russian, too.)
We even had another metaphor, the Romulans, who were like our former foes the Japanese (of World War II vintage), who later were used as handy foreigners with whom we had little contact (unlike the Klingons) and always uneasy and hostile relations. (If only this series had been around after the Iranian revolution!)
“There is no correlation between Star Trek and our body politic”
I'm afraid you're incorrect about this. See previous posting. (Not to mention that the show played with contemporary political or social issues of the time.)
DLS -
Your brother's analysis agrees with what I've read elsewhere. The latest Star Trek movie seems less steeped in politics. Maybe that's on purpose, to appeal to the more apolitical twenty-something generation?
“The latest Star Trek movie seems less steeped in politics. Maybe that's on purpose, to appeal to the more apolitical twenty-something generation?”
It could be because they're clueless, like writers for so much produced nowadays seem to be — and perhaps preoccupied with whatever simply appeals briefly to short-attention-span audiences, who don't appreciate scripts with real story lines, much less politics or other embedded plot features, I suspect.
Note that it's another “remake” of something from long ago. Often I wonder if movies or songs are remade because the producers can't think of anything good like in the good old days. Hence, remakes.
“I saw her standing there…” “Hey, come listen to this! Some guys are singing one of Tiffany's songs!”
(I assume it's clear to most people that the above is sarcasm, meant to point out the absurdity of liberals pondering why conservatives like a show that portrays principles that liberals accuse conservatives of hating.)
AD, this is an extremely puzzling statement, given that there would not have been any such topic to write this post about if a conservative writer himself had not plainly said that he did not understand why a show that emphasized liberal values like peace, tolerance, due process, and progress, would appeal to conservatives.
Steve Benen, John Holbo, Kevin Drum, and myself would not have had this Potemra quote to quote, so to speak, if Potemra had not written it.
So I don't have a clue, really, where your sarcasm is coming from in this instance. It's not liberals accusing conservatives here of hating peace, tolerance, and due process. It's a conservative who is STATING in plain English that peace, tolerance, and due process are liberal principles.
I know that conservatives like to pin the blame on liberals for everything, and aren't as keen on personal responsibility as applied to themselves as when they can apply it to others, but I really think we liberals are not responsible for Mike Potemra's befuddlement about why conservatives would enjoy watching Star Trek when it's full of liberal values like peace, tolerance, and due process.
As much as we often disagree, this kind of illogical reaction is not really like you.
Doc, your conservative credentials are renewed. That's good for another five years.
My bad. I missed that Potemra is a conservative. I assumed, apparently wrongly, that he was not since the idea that conservatives are principally opposed to peace and due process is laughable, and I think the vast majority of conservatives would agree. So I apologize for my sarcasm before, and I did not intend it to be as stinging as it might have sounded anyway. Now just as you were puzzled by my statement, I'm puzzled why he would say such a thing. I'm not sure he was being serious, but in any case… my bad.
Also, I like Dr J's explanation, which was along the lines of what I was trying to say in my misplaced sarcasm.
My bad. I missed that Potemra is a conservative.
Oh good. I'm glad that's what it was. I'm relieved!
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I merely meant that there is no correlation between the competent leadership featured on Star Trek and our rather laughable leadership.
DLS said, “But we'll fight (as good Republicans) to defend ourselves and our interests, and while we don't interfere, we do give good conventional advice”
Those seem to me like more left-wing ideals. Woodrow Wilson fought WWI, and FDR and Truman fought WWII, to protect defend the U.S. and protect American interests. All liberals. The left widely supported Afghanistan, since it was a defensive war. The left opposed Vietnam and Iraq because it was “interfering” with other countries, and not in a way that defends the U.S. or preserves its interests.
It seems to me that it is the right-wing who want to interfere, contrary to your definition. Hence the desire to go into Iraq. Left-wingers don't generally oppose defensive wars; Obama, for example, ran his campaign on continuing the fight in Afghanistan.
Star Trek meets Monty Python:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luVjkTEIoJc
“no correlation between the competent leadership featured on Star Trek and our rather laughable leadership”
Oh, I don't know — once when I was describing the politics of Star Trek, someone interjected to say, “Yes, of course, it's like us — corny, run by B-movie actors…”
The key to The next generation's success with conservatives lies in Star Trek – The Next Generation, Episode 26: The Neutral Zone
A frozen at death business man is awakened three hundred years later, and his first wish is too find out how well his stocks have done in the interim. Picard explains to the CEO that accumulated wealth no longer is a valid criteria for evaluating one's life. I always saw this as a pretty good metaphor for the average conversation at TMV
Then again, the crusty old capitalist and the new age captain both saw the threat from the Romulan's intrusion into the neutral zone. So at least we know, no matter how far into the future, people simply have to have an adversary. Be it Romulans or Vegans or Meat Eaters, we have to blame somebody else for our problems.
“Those seem to me like more left-wing ideals”
United Nations model for the Federation (with lip service to federalism), left-wing. Check.
Inclusiveness (insert politically tainted word here, “diversity,”) fighting bigotry and unfairness, left-wing. Check.
Convention, “establishment,” pro-democracy and business: not the left-wing way. All that changed after later 1960s radicalism. The Establishment was hated. Lefties nowadays would disparage the “evil, oppressive, neo-colonialist-capitalist-imperialist” Federation (federal — yeech!) and would be sympathetic to the poor, misunderstood, oppressed-victims-of-the-federation Klingons. (It matters not that some lefties would now resort to superficial dishonesty and claim that typical conservatives would favor or practice the Klingon approach to life and foreign relations.)
I confess I don't see what the issue is unless one believes it's only possible to like TV shows/Movies that supposedly mirror one's own ideology. Sometimes people like a TV show because it's a good TV show and not because of whatever “messages” one believes the show is advocating.
“I don't see what the issue is”
The spotting of political themes in this or that is interesting to anybody who has an interest in politics. It's not central to anybody's philsophy of life or anything; I never knew, much less cared, about the politics of Star Trek until I was told about it. (Then — “Hey, that's right! Characters, good guys and bad guys, described by politics. Political themes in some of the snows. It's true.”) When I saw this thread, and the comments, it was re-triggered.
Oh, and yes, I would have liked to have seen the lefty reaction post 1960s to the original Star Trek and its themes (with the “inversion” of values that the Left adopted, anti-USA and anti-West, anti-Establishment; the show even included a story about naive, unrealistic hippies that had a tragic ending, a Lesson to teach the audience [wink]). I would have especially liked it had the original Star Trek (why are they going into space? Raping and pillaging like Columbus?) been during the Reagan years (ooooo).