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E Plebnista 2022 [1]
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Date: 2022-07-04
At least Cloud William was a decent sort
“E plebnista”
Say that word to a Trekkie and you’ll get one of three reactions.
1) They haven’t a clue because they haven’t seen an episode older than TNGs (Star Trek: The Next Generation) ‘Encounter At Farpoint’.
2) An eyeroll along with muttering about Shatner chewing the scenery more than usual.
3) A smile and a talk about the meaning of The Omega Glory (TOG).
Star Trek can be very prescient, unknowingly so even from the very first pilot. Women were given power to lead. Biobeds were turned into invasionless scanners like forehead thermometers and pulse ox fingertip sensors. Communicators turned into flip-phones. Tricorders turned into smart phones. Shuttlecraft turned into minivans.
But in the case of TOG, it was both a commentary on the Vietnam War and mindless worship of words not understood then, and on the current state of our country now. Prescience, and maybe the depressing thought that we haven’t really changed at all.
For those who haven’t seen the episode, it goes like this:
The Enterprise discovers the USS Exeter in orbit around Omega IV. The crew is revealed to have died except for the captain, who remains on the planet. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Unlucky Red Shirt #12 beam down to the planet and find Prime Directive-violating Captain Ronald Tracey. He has made friends with the “Kohms,” an “Asiatic” group in conflict with the savage Aryan “Yangs.” Tracey believe he has found a “Fountain of Youth” with the planet’s population, but it turns out it’s just evolution/natural selection following a devastating war with biological weapons. It turns out that his crew would have lived if they had stayed on the planet a bit longer. Kirk and Co. eventually discover that the Yangs and Kohms are parallels to the “Yankees” and “Communists” of the 20th Century Earth. The Yangs, after a decisive victory over the Kohms, celebrate by bringing out a tattered U.S. flag, pulling out a Bible*, and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. Cue record scratch noise. After a few random fights scenes between Kirk and Tracey, Kirk soon triumphs, Tracey is arrested, and the Yang chief pulls out a copy of the U.S. Constitution. Jim next gives a classic Kirkian speech about the power of words, the Constitution, and the good ol’ US of A in general, and the Starfleet crew leave those freedom-loving Yangs to begin living out the words of that foundational American document. The camera slow pans to the Star Spangled Banner hanging in the corner and credits roll. *My emphasis added. More prescience, right?
Living in the USA and being a kid in the 1970s meant antenna received reruns on TV, because cable and the internet hadn’t been invented yet (snark) and I watched nothing more ardently than Star Trek. I liked the humanistic vision of inclusiveness and diversity that I saw, and one episode I liked was TOG — because it spoke on those values. And it spoke about those who didn’t understand them.
And that’s why this diary. On our most revered of days — if you count today’s BBQ and ads about 4th of July deals at your car dealer as part of that reverence.
One think Captain Kirk made clear is that those highfalutin’ words mean nothing unless they apply to everyone. To be excluded is to mock the hard work of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. And that’s what the MAGA crowd doesn’t get, and doesn’t care about. I liken them to Cloud William, the chief who parrots the ‘holy words’ by rote without truly understanding them and what they really mean. They’re something meant to apply only to the ‘right’ people. And that’s not us.
Here is Kirk’s greatest speech:
So. Where do we go from here? We have a nation of Cloud Williams amongst us who don’t have a clue about how things are supposed to work. Most of them don’t want to get a clue. The President gets blamed for everything from gas prices to the weather.
Where do we go from here?
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