It's called "cognitive dissonance."
Well, in part by recognizing that racism is an ideological system created as a means of class warfare. People are not inherently racist; what happened, historically, was that the wealthy white elite recognized that the oppressed lower white tiers of society might make common cause with oppressed blacks, and so sought to instill into those whites feelings of alienation from and superiority to blacks. By elevating those whites slightly above blacks in the class system, and by creating these racial animosities, the white elite could therefore "divide and conquer;" by keeping the oppressed classes hostile to one-another through the ideological system called racism, their domination was secured.
In a classless society, a lot of the driving forces behind racist ideologies collapse. That doesn't mean racism would disappear immediately, but it does mean that the driving mechanisms are gone.
Yes, and they were all speaking metaphorically. People like to call the United States the "land of the free," but that doesn't mean there are no prisoners or no oppressed people.
I really think that's a stretch. For one thing, you're talking about the sort of interference in the natural ecosystem that would likely result in cataclysmic damage to the environment. There's just no way to control such a complex system without destabilizing the whole thing. The weather modification network is probably there to do things like make sure tornadoes don't form over downtown Chicago, not to literally control the entire natural environment.
I think that 24th Century Humans are very aware that they live in a society that has solved many of the social problems that vexed their ancestors. I think some tend to take that and apply it as a form of blind patriotism -- the "Rah rah rah, we're ever so evolved, my goodness we rock" ethnocentric types. Riker in "The Last Outpost" is a prime example. Others, such as Sisko, take a more skeptical view towards how much more evolved Humanity truly is and how "perfect" Earth actually is. So it seems like there's a lot of argument over how much of a "paradise" Earth is and over how "evolved" Humanity is -- just like today, there's a lot of argument over just whether or not the United States is a truly just and free country.
Frankly, I'd be willing to bet that there's some Federation equivalent to The Nation or Mother Jones, still banging away at their 24th Century keyboards, arguing that the Federation still has major flaws that need to be fixed. As well there should be -- a society that becomes too complacent about whether or not it lives up to its principles is a society that's doomed to start violating them.
You're playing a word game and it's not cute.
Sonak is very clearly and obviously using the word "extraordinary" in the sense of "violating the laws of physics as they are currently understood and lacking in empirical support," not in the sense of "commonly believed by many people."
Belief in an afterlife may well be common, but this does not mean that it is not an extraordinary claim, nor does it mean that it is supported by empirical evidence.
Considering that so-called "near-death experiences" seem to mirror the well-established effects of oxygen deprivation on the brain, and that the supernatural figures identified in them seem to vary according to the culture into which the individual so having the experience was raised, I'm fairly skeptical of this claim.
I suppose that's a valid interpretation, but Dehner's dialogue to me seemed to be implying a more generalized fear of and prejudice against telepathic Humans.
Absolutely! Which goes to my point: The Federation has progressed beyond any modern society. It is free of poverty, of major disease, of hunger, of want, of class, of racism, of sexism, etc. But it's not perfect. What it is, however, is, it's a society that's dedicated to its ideals of liberty and egalitarianism, and when abuses occur, it tends to correct them. Which is far, far more than modern societies can say most of the time.
