Not long ago, two people I follow on Twitter were talking about Star Trek.

The first was, based on my knowledge of the tweeter and the context of the here and now, I see as (most likely) a comical remark about the nature of our current culture of politics and how distrustful we are of foreign powers¹. The reply was less clear. It seems pretty obvious that, in the context of the Star Trek universe, the Federation is a peaceful organization. The only wars we’ve seen them take part in have been defensive, and they establish political and economic ties with neighbouring civilizations, including former enemies.

The only two rationales I can see for that second tweet are 1) that he agrees with Matt Yglesias that the Federation is not to be trusted and he misspoke intending to say it is absurd that they insist on claiming to be a peaceful organization; 2) he believes that an organization as large and powerful as the Federation should be a non-peaceful organization, perhaps expanding and annexing nearby planets and civilizations by force. The former is ridiculous when you look at the canon of Star Trek, which clearly shows the Federation as a benevolent force. The latter is ridiculous for a few different reasons.

Arguing for any nation/organization to be aggressive and possessive toward non-members is very odd to me. I’d thought the days of moral superiority, Manifest Destiny, or American Exceptionalism — all the sorts of ideas that lead to thinking a people are above another in some fundamental way — were gone but I can reluctantly accept that some people still linger on some of those thoughts. The even odder thing is that we’re applying 20th century precepts to a fictional 24th century organization, created by a man trying to construct a futuristic utopia. The political realities of today probably won’t apply three hundred years from now, and they definitely won’t apply to the fictional, preconceived-as-peaceful, time of Star Trek.

---

Footnotes

1. It’s entirely possible he is genuinely positing that the Federation doesn’t deserve to be trusted, but if that’s the case, this post remains relevant. [↩]