Eddington's vitriolic assessment of The Federation
- Thread starter Ragitsu
- Start date
It's bratty when you were warned before moving there that it's a war zone and claim the Federation abandoned you when you were given the option to resettle elsewhere.
It's not accepting responsibility for your decisions, which is one of the traits of being a brat.
TNG's "The Ensigns of Command" retroactively touches on the Maquis colonist subject. As one of the colonists in the end says, "There are other places, other challenges." And as Data said, "These are things, and things can be replaced. Lives cannot."
I'll agree to the bolded part, as well.
Regarding my use of 'brat', I get what you mean, and I never liked what happened to those colonists. I used to be very much on the side of the Maquis. But my view changed when they went from defending their homes to outright aggression, theft from the Federation, and poisoning other planets. Then I looked back and saw the behavior that led to those actions. This is why I ended up using the term. Brattiness and entitled behavior are very, very much things I cannot stand in real life, so that colors my views a bit. Hope that explains my reasoning behind why I picked that term.
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An accessory both before and after the fact. Okay, Sisko didn't know Garak was going to kill Vreenak and whats-his-name the skeezy forger beforehand, but Sisko did know they were manufacturing evidence, lying, and making payoffs before the fact.
However in the broader picture it looks very likely that once the Domion had finished beating the Federation and Klingons that they would have turned their attentions to the Romulans. The Dominion doesn't tolerate alternative centers of power in the gamma quadrant, and they wouldn't for long in the alpha quadrant either.
I agree and I would have been happier if Section 31 had never existed or if they had been taken down in season 7. Bashir and O'Brien shouldn't have been the only people working toward that either.
We're not sure the Federation was really much more powerful than Cardassia. Remember that before the Federation-Dominion war started, the Klingons had kicked Cardassia around for a while first, and Cardassia was not a completely enthusiastic client of the Dominion. Maybe the Federation was more power in total, but the Federation also had a lot of other tasks worry about and couldn't send their whole fleet to fight Cardassia.
Are you going back to when Cardassia first occupied Bajor, 60 years before Emissary opened? When Bajor wasn't in or even near Federation space? In your view, does the Federation have to intervene anywhere at all no matter whether they have a right to be there or not, just because some injustice is happening? That's a very slippery slope.
Regarding Section 31...
I think it makes sense. Odo was right... every single other power had a similar organization, one that does the really dirty work so the rest of their power (Cardassian Empire, Romulan Empire, Federation, etc.) can keep going. In a galaxy as hostile as it has been portrayed to be, it's somewhat naive to think Section 31 or an organization like it never existed for the Federation.
What I don't agree with at all was how DISCO portrayed them... as an organization that had a fleet of their own and virtually everyone knew about them. It's one of the many reasons why that season was so terrible.
I think it makes sense. Odo was right... every single other power had a similar organization, one that does the really dirty work so the rest of their power (Cardassian Empire, Romulan Empire, Federation, etc.) can keep going. In a galaxy as hostile as it has been portrayed to be, it's somewhat naive to think Section 31 or an organization like it never existed for the Federation.
What I don't agree with at all was how DISCO portrayed them... as an organization that had a fleet of their own and virtually everyone knew about them. It's one of the many reasons why that season was so terrible.
They tried a bigger power play and got burned.
We'll be more careful next time.
We'll be more careful next time.
Do the Klingons have such an organization?
Does the United States today? Back in the 1950s and early 1960s, the CIA did a lot of dirty tricks to protect American (business) interests, but their activities were limited to foreign intelligence gathering in the 1970s.
I tend to focus on the murder itself; however, yes, Sisko was on board with other illicit activities.
"Odo" is nothing more than a writer's words represented by proxy. If a writer wants The Federation to stand apart - to truly demonstrate uniqueness - as an inspiration, there need be no implication that The Federation is just as cutthroat as everyone else. Otherwise, we are left with more of the same.
Wouldn't surprise me at all.
To paraphrase Sisko in "THINGS PAST", because I don't remember the exact words...
"Everything always looks tidy when someone else is doing the cleaning."
This quote applies to everything from a bar to an interstellar organization.
I disagree on this idea. To me, Section 31 is like Kirk's speech in "A Taste of Armageddon." "We're not going to kill today." Section 31 is the easy road, the path towards being just like the other powers, to respond with like against like. What I think both DS9 and TOS and yes, even DSC, does is offer up choice.
The thing about TNG that drove me nuts was the near naive level of belief darker facets of humanity don't exist, yet we see admirals routinely respond to outside threats with more intensive measures. Is it so hard to believe these people might gather together and find a common goal, and that other people, human or otherwise (though it's usually evil humans) would not be tempted to gather together for that goal.
Section 31 represents the "killers" in our history but we don't have to kill...today!
And walking around flashing their black delta like an FBI badge.