From Tezwa-Iraq and the lying president where David Mack got to play out a leftist fantasy of murdering a president that he hated,
I have to admit I have found myself put off by the thinly-veiled political commentary as well, with the assassination of Min Zife being a particularly sickening thing for me to read, too.
I'm sorry, but this complaint is absolute bullshit. At no point in
A Time to Heal was the assassination of Min Zife portrayed as a good thing.
None. Section 31's agents are very clearly
villains, and the assassination of Min Zife and his advisers is explicitly depicted as a
bad thing. It's not David Mack having a "leftist fantasy of murdering a president he hated." It's David Mack taking a justifiable anger and then showing the horror of taking that anger too far, of letting yourself become so self-righteous that you become no better than the one you hated.
You're imposing a simple binary political message on his novel where none exists. His point wasn't, "Min Zife/George W. Bush bad, anyone hurting him good." His point was, "Political corruption exists at varying levels, and some people are more corrupt than others. Institutional corruption compromises everybody who participates in society's institutions, and some people are irredeemable criminals, but some are even worse than them, and none of it is okay."
Learn to see nuance when it's presented to you. Not everything is black and white. Sometimes, things are black, and then they're
pitch black.
From Tezwa-Iraq and the lying president where David Mack got to play out a leftist fantasy of murdering a president that he hated, to the Michael Martin naming Spacedocks after Obama
I'm sorry, but that's also bullshit. No one complains about a space station named after William McKinley, even though he was a horrible imperialist who oppressed millions of Cubans and Filipinos as a result of America taking them during the Spanish-American War.
Barack Obama, whatever you may think of his politics -- and in the past year, I've ceased being a fan of his politics -- is the first person of African descent to become the head of state of a majority white country. That is
huge. That is historic. That is a first in
human history! A black man could never become the President of China. A black man could never become the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom or Prime Minister of Canada or Australia. A black man could never lead Israel or Russia or Italy or Spain or Germany. You'll never see an Algerian President of France or a Turkish Chancellor of Germany. You'll never see a Chechan President of Russia. You'll never see an Irish Catholic Prime Minister of the U.K. You'll never see an Aboriginal PM of Australia.
Obama's election is a huge milestone, not only in American history, but in
human history.
And that would have been true
no matter who the first black President of the United States had been. If it had been Colin Powell, it would have been just as true. If it had been Michael Steele, it would have been just as true. If it had been Alan Keyes, it would have been just as true. That a majority-white country elected a black man, and this only a few generations after segregation and only a century and a half after slavery? It's amazing, no matter who that black man was. It says something about how far society itself has changed.
So it's completely appropriate to name a space station after Obama. Just like it would have been if it had been President Colin Powell, or a black Republican. Just like it would have been completely appropriate to name a space station after
Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the first elected female head of government (who was elected Prime Minister of Sri Lanka in 1960).
If we can have a space station named after a man who got millions of innocent people killed in Cuba and the Philippines without controversy, surely we can have a space station named after a guy whose biggest contribution to history will inevitably be opening the door for future people of all colors of any political stripe.
I for one am tired of the charged political commentary and wish it wouldn't intrude on my Trek Lit
Too bad.
Star Trek has always been political and left-leaning. If you don't like that, you should go watch
Star Wars, which safely couches its politics in fantasy and mysticism rather than substantive political concepts.
Which one is it, Mike? If Iraq's unjust immoral, and wholly unjustifiable, than Casey died for nothing--so how was that his "last full measure"?
The notion that one cannot honor a soldier's service and sacrifice yet also think that the war in which he fought was unjust is fallacious.
Let me repeat the point I'd made before:
What would have happened if I, being in the scenario a published author shortly after Obama leaves office, put out a Trek novel with a dedication slamming the "unjust, immoral, and wholly unjustifiable policies of the (now thankfully defunct) Obama administration"?
Absolutely nothing, because the author has an absolute and inviolate right to dedicate his/her novel to whomever he/she chooses, for any reason whatsoever, and no one else has the right to stop them.
You might get some people bitching at you on the Internet for it, but who cares? If it's what you believe, and you're dedicating your book to someone for that reason, put it in there.
I would have been slammed and condemned across this forum for "forcing my views"--and rightfully so.
Oh, hogwash. If Diane Carey had a
Star Trek book out tomorrow and she dedicated it to George W. Bush for sending us to Iraq, guess what? That wouldn't be forcing her views on anyone. It would be her absolute right to dedicate that book to whomever she wanted for whatever reason she wanted, and no one else would have any say in that decision whatsoever.
What if I had worked into my books praise for Bush
Then you would be violating the inherent ethos of
Star Trek, which has, whether or not you like it, always been left-leaning. But that wouldn't be an infringement upon anyone's rights, and if
Star Trek's owner, CBS, allowed you to do so, then, hey, I might be pissed but it's not a big deal at the end of the day.
and condemnation of Obama?
Given how Obama's turned out anymore, I don't think that many of the left-leaning posters would automatically object to that these days.
What if, for example, I'd have given Jake Sisko a line praising Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck as great political humorists, commentators, and voices of honesty along the lines of Will Rogers and Edward R. Murrow?
I would be condemned and smeared as forcing my political views on my readers--again, rightfully so.
Uh, no. You would not be forcing anything on your readers. Now, I'd condemn your choice to do that for being
bloody stupid, sure, but at no point would I for one ever accuse you of forcing anything on me. Reading something in a book doesn't force it on me.
The question is: should those like Michael A. Martin be held to the same standard?
Star Trek has always been left-leaning, and to say otherwise is just inaccurate. Similarly, Ayn Rand's novels are libertarian-leaning; to say otherwise is just inaccurate. Works of art often have implicit political messages, sometimes overt and sometimes covert. The issue is not whether or not
Star Trek novels should have political content, the issue is whether or not
Star Trek novels' political content are consistent with the canon's political content (just as it would be if the Estate of Ayn Rand were to authorize someone to write a sequel to
Atlas Shrugged or
The Fountainhead).
Some of the authors aren't overly offensive about it, but Martin is a huge offender. If I had opened a book and seen it dedicated to Sheehan or the defunct Bush administration, I probably would have returned it. That's just obnoxious. His Kucinich dedication was bad enough...
You know, I think the concept of a Department of Peace is bloody stupid, for the simple reason that I already think it's the job of the foreign ministry to conduct diplomacy and preserve the peace. But to call it "obnoxious" or "offensive" is just absurd. There's nothing offensive about wanting to avoid war and preserve peace, and there's nothing offensive about praising a politician who wants to do that. If Ron Paul were to call for a Department of Peace, I wouldn't object to anyone dedicating an ST novel to him for that, even though I think Ron Paul is about as detestable a politician as is out there.
I do tend to view the Zife thing as a wish fulfillment and the Bacco replacement as more of the same.
I've already demolished the idea that the murder of Zife was wish fulfillment. I'm curious, now: Who does Bacco stand for, in your eyes, if she's just wish fulfillment, too?
And what policies does Bacco have which mark her as a "stealth liberal," if that's how you view her? What traits of Bacco's make you think she'd be a liberal if she existed in the real world today?
Oh...and Rush, the way to clearly ID Min Zife is to look not just at Zife, but at Azernal. The dynamic there is most definitely a reference to how some viewed the Bush-Cheney dynamic. There was not an "Azernal" figure in the Nixon administration that I am aware of.
David Mack has been very candid in noting that Zife and Azernal were inspired by Bush and Cheney. But if you're looking, you could probably see shades of Kissinger in Azernal, too. I don't know if that was intentional, but it would probably be a very defensible argument to interpret Zife/Azernal through a Nixon/Kissinger lens.
Yeah, it's a pretty annoying trend to thinly veil political beliefs in the more recent Trek lit. Seems to be the popular thing to do ever since Galactica was so heavily praised for it. Sci-fi has always had its messages, but at least it used to try to be a bit more subtle about it and not beat you about the face and neck with those messages.
Ahem...
"Lokai is white on the
right side. All of his people are white on the right side."
Racism is not a conservative/liberal issue--despite hard-line-pundit claims to the contrary.
It may not be today, but at the time, it was. Racism is simply an issue where liberals -- in both parties -- convinced conservatives -- in both parties -- that they were wrong and it was time to change.
"Bones, do you remember the twentieth century brush wars on the Asian continent? Two giant powers involved, much like the Klingons and ourselves. Neither side felt it could pull out."
"Yes, I remember. It went on bloody year after bloody year."
That was not a value judgement on whether the liberal or the conservative stance on Vietnam was correct. Still, as I recall, Kirk's solution was to supply his friend's side with weaponry--one could call this fascinatingly similar to the Reagan Doctrine of the 1980's.
Sure. Plenty of liberals supported the Vietnam War at the time. Remember: Liberalism and Conservatism are not unchanging doctrines, but are ideologies that evolve over time according to new evaluations of historical events.
Also, it depends on what you mean by "anti-war". DS9 strongly emphasized that "a war may be the only chance we have".
But DS9 was still anti-war. It never depicted war as a good thing, or tried to claim that war could be quick and easy. It always depicted war as a horrible thing that should only be resorted to when there is truly no other option to defend yourself.
And DS9 is not the be-all-end-all of ST. You have to look at EVERY episode that featured potential wars to judge what ST's general attitude towards war is.
However, again, I didn't see Zife as a Bush type--even when one does consider the "idiot" stereotype. Zife didn't stike me as much of an idiot. In fact, the books did make note of the fact that his leadership during the Dominion war was excellent--and that the Tezwa affair was one tragic mistake which brought his administration down.
I can't remember what book it was, but I thought he was described as explicitly being there to look pretty so that the war leader, Azernal, could rule through him.
You're both over-simplifying the Zife/Azernal relationship. Zife was depicted as a person who had trouble firmly coming to decisions and who relied upon Azernal a great deal, but who also rather firmly held certain opinions of his own and did not simply govern as Azernal's figurehead.
^I would agree--based on a subjective definition of "liberal".
In my case, I would define it in the classical sense--"liberal" meaning "liberty", in the spirit of John Locke "Classical Liberalism", as opposed to what we would call "Modern Liberalism".
As for the latter (Secular Humanism)--well, "humanism", definitely. "Secular"...well, I'd say the jury's out on that one. There are often debates on religious principles, which end up with no easy answers. Both Sisko and Janeway have had to make leaps of faith.
I'm not sure what you're referring to with Janeway, but as for Sisko, his overt religiosity is a clear break from ST's normal patterns. Which is fine -- I think ST had allowed itself to not merely become secular, but actively anti-religious by that point -- but it also does not define ST as not being in general a secular program. Outliers do not define the general paradigm.
Racism is not a conservative/liberal issue--despite hard-line-pundit claims to the contrary.
The interracial kiss wasn't staunchly "liberal", in the modern political sense of the word. Again, racism is a non-partisan issue.
In the 1960s (and earlier), that was patently untrue.
Eh...no. Conservative icon Barry Goldwater--for all the crap he gets over opposing the
1964 Civil Rights Act (he felt the Federal Government overstepped its authority on that)--was in fact a founder of the Arizona NAACP, a staunch advocate of desegregation of the Arizona National Guard, and a stong supporter of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964.
And Barry Goldwater was an outlier amongst conservatives in that regard.
It may have been "the only chance" but there's no way to come away from the Dominion War as portrayed on DS9 with a pro-war message.
It certainly wasn't "anti-war".
Yes, it was. Being anti-war doesn't mean you don't acknowledge that sometimes wars are necessary, it means you don't think it should be reverted to unless absolutely necessary. Most anti-war activists of the past ten years are opposed to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars precisely because they felt them unnecessary.
