No worries. I am not a Trekkie. I don’t even have Star Trek on my Facebook list of favorite TV shows. But immediately after the Godfather Trilogy, Pulp Fiction, and a Bruce Springsteen concert, there is no better bible for life lessons than Star Trek’s 3 seasons of everlasting fame. And one of them is apropos in U.S. politics circa 2009.
Show number 23–”A Taste of Armageddon”–was a first season classic. It aired on February 23, 1967. For Chicago readers, this was around the time of the great Chicago snow storm of 1967. I was four years old.
The U.S.S. Enterprise is transporting an Ambassador to distant star cluster. Captain Kirk, who is accompanying the Ambassador, beams down and has a convo with the planet’s head honcho. Kirk learns that his planet has been at war for 500 years with a nearby planet , one that was originally settled by their people but is now their sworn enemy. They have been at war so long that they can’t even recall why.
Luckily, this inter-planet war is fought by compassionate nations. Social engineering (read clue to today’s tie-in) evidently is one of their specialties. These kind-hearted people discovered that the deaths that come with war are unnecessarily violent and the destruction is an avoidable by-product. So they did away with the exploding devices. Instead, the outcome of the battles was determined using a computer simulation.
A war is still a war even if computer simulations are used as substitutes for things that go pop. But for war to be a war, deaths are a must. So, when the computer spits out its results, the people calculated as casualties voluntarily report to dis-integration chambers to die. The deaths are compassionate–you might say this is the change they came to believe in.
Enter U.S.S. Enterprise. The computer incorporates the ship into its simulation and, as fate would have it, calculates that the Enterprise is destroyed. Captain Kirk, bless his heart, refuses to cooperate and instead destroys the planet’s war computers. “Not good”, cries out the planets’ leaders, as they know that this breaks the treaty that set up the simulated war. Now a real interplanetary war is imminent.
Part II of the story on Monday…
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I suppose lessons in life can be gleaned from all sorts of mediums. Captain Kirk always did get the girl and fight the good fight. I don’t suppose you a bit of Bill Shatner in yourself? I’ll take Bruce for life lessons and messages. For that matter, Kung Fu always inspired a David versus Goliath feeling in me. Archie Bunker was ahead of his time as well.
Dont’ get me started on Cheryl Ladd in the trailer for Charlie’s Angels.