I have been watching Star Trek: Enterprise on Net Flix for the past weeks. I never did manage to watch much of the show when it was on tv, so this is my chance. You may recall, this is the one with Scott Bakula, not Patrick Stewart.
Anyway, as I was watching over these past days, one particular theme came to the rise. And, perhaps it is because of the turmoil that election years bring and all the weird things Republicans say that then make it into my conversations with my father that made me sensitive to it. The point is: doing what seems right, expedient, and even acceptable under the circumstances can lead to truly devastating results.
Case in point: the above picture. Here is a man beloved by most Trekkies, speaking patiently on the concepts of freedom. Equality. How could we continually be fighting the same fights for so long? It's been 150 years since it was declared that treating another person as a slave was unacceptable. It's been 70 years since we locked up a whole race of people for the fear of what they may do. Then the same general things come about and we call them "Patriot" laws, or name them after some poor soul who should only be remembered fondly. And, we still have folks campaigning for president on those very same tennants, those same ideas that bypassing the very ideals of this country's founding and subjecting people to unfair and unequal treatment is just fine.
Why can we not grow up?
