Monday, November 01, 2004

 
Spock: a neoconservative?

Unable to catch up on sleep, so might as well add to what a Google search suggests is a vast wasteland of drivel about Star Trek and the election....
The "corbomite manuever" was, of course, not only used in the episode, "The Corbomite Maneuver" to bluff a benign entity who was attempting to confirm the benign intentions of the Enterprise, but also in "The Deadly Years," in which it worked rather well on Romulans: Captain Kirk, rejuvenated(not with stem cells, but with an adrenalin derivative) after some premature aging rendered him unfit, reassumes command of the Enterprise which had been surrounded by Romulan warships. Kirk frightens off the Romulans by giving the order to broadcast a warning about the effects of the c. device using a code known to have been broken by the Romulans.
The Corner chatter that in the fantasy world o' trek, the Klingons would not be deterred by the maneuver seems correct. It also seems plausible that Romulans, sometimes portrayed and derided as duplicitous and without honor *would* be deterred.(tho in "The Deadly Years" they arguably didn't show much cowardice in backing away from a mere incursion of the Enterprise into their "neutral zone"-though they *were* ready to deal with the Enterprise in the manner of the Soviet towards KAL 007)
It's a little disconcerting that some faux Klingons have come out for Kerry, a warrior who did not merely advocate US withdrawal, but also went over to the other side -and, to the extent politically feasible, stayed there. His support among "Romulans"(don't think they exist in anything like the number of "Klingons")should be even higher.
-And not that some Romulans didn't have a sense of, if not honor, duty. The captain of the vessel which had been probing the Federation for signs of weakness destroys his ship after it was disabled by the Enterprise.(The "Balance of Terror" episode borrowed shamelessly from the submarine saga, "The Enemy Below"-some of the lamer clips I've made include a scene in which the U Boot captain orders the playing of an inspirational song-dubbed over in mine by the Sex Pistol's "SubMission"-I might have done something similar with "Das Boot") Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, perhaps deciding like the Romulan commander, that they "had one last duty to perform," suffered a lethal dose of electrons rather than accept an offer of leniency in exchange for informing on their comrades.
While acknowledging that the Rosenbergs lied and spied in the service of an evil cause, one can still grant that they showed courage. One has less admiration for the long line of well-off, and in some cases, rich 'n famous leftists who falsely claim to be martyred, oppressed, intimidated, libeled, and so on. And still less for the useful idiots who actually believe in such crap as the innocence of the Rosenbergs.(this doesn't include such nuances as asserting that there wasn't enough evidence to have justly convicted Ethel of a capital offence.) Kerry seems likely to be the sort of weasel who, though driven to achieve totalitarian goals, believes many of his own lies.(As argued much earlier it is plausible that there may be a sociobiological-genetic basis for the survival value of lying to oneself so as to deceive one's enemies-which conservatives tend to dismiss as "irrational" or, alternatively, as conscious lying)
I'll assume that most if not all, of the writers of the various and er, stundry Star Trek series and quantum spin-offs support the election of John Kerry. And although it may be a stretch to think of "Mr. Spock" as something of a "neoconservative.," the Vulcans strove to conquer their "emotions" while still having some dedication to something like peace and freedom.(granted totalitarians and their idiots use those terms to lie)Their offshoots, the Romulans, as noted above, are ruthless, cruel, sneaky and so forth. Spock expresses a hope that the universe will unfold as it should, sounding a little like Francis Fukuyama in writing "End of History," in the post cold warrior epic, "The Undiscovered Country." And when humans got their first glimpse of a Romulan("on screen")in "Balance of Terror," Spock not only acknowledges that it is likely that the Romulans were an offshoot of his people, but also that given the Vulcans'(One is reminded of the old saw about someone who is not on the Left when young having no heart,and someone who does not become conservative when older, no brain-The young Vulcan civilization was violent, and individual Vulcans are born with plenty of "heart") history of violence, that if the Romulans return safely from a successful raid on the Federation frontier, an invasion would surely follow. It's time to try again for a nap,(proofread later) and the readers of NRO don't need a list of their luminaries who started on the Left.(and came back from their "hells," not with "empty hands"(Chambers/Malraux), but with insights and dire warnings)