Star Trek Review: Who Would Captain James T. Kirk Vote for? JFK, of Course
James P. Pinkerton, a fellow at the New America Foundation and a contributor to the Fox News Channel, was a domestic policy aide in the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses.
So the new "Trek" is a tonic. If it's a hit, box-office success could signal that the Kennedy/Roddenberry vision has a political future, as well as a past. For in the movie, we once again hear the clarion call, "These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise..." And so those neo-Sorensonian cadences all come flooding back, filling some of us with hope that a new generation will pick up the torch, carrying it to the far reaches of the future.
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Reader Comments
Kirks an Independent...the movies psychological...and we do live in a bright future.
Star Trek was never about the machinery...it was always about the human condition....and it still is.
First, on our bright new future. Our future has turned out different than the 1960's technologically...but it is amazing. We have robots wandering around Mars, we have looked through time and space with orbiting satellites, and we have put sent satellites (now the equivalent of robots that do not walk) around the Jovian planets. We recently just saw a rubber fueled private rocket take off.
NASA JPL is where its at...not Florida anymore. My dad was an engineer for Collins Radio during the 60's..he worked on the Apollo program. He is far far more impressed with robots on Mars. We do have 200 years to get to Star Trek...be patient.
Psychological not sociological:
The great questions of the 1960's were sociological, how groups and cultures relate to one another. Our society today...I think for the better...is more psychologically oriented...how do we foster our self-awareness and grow and flourish.
Oddly enough the new movie was true to the 1960's sociological treatment of women...all the female characters were communications or nurses...anyone else notice that. The Women's movement that came to fruition was in many ways a psychological reform...where we have learned to identify differently as individuals.
The psychological considerations of the new Star Trek were far more advanced than anything from forty years a go.
KIRK WAS AN INDEPENDENT:
Given his lack of structure growing up and his cynicism for the "organization", Kirk was a pull yourself up by the boots Independent...no doubt. There are elements of Conservative and Liberal identities...but they do not define the man.... He would have voted for Ross Perot in the 1990's and probably Barack Obama (not as liberal but as a change agent) in 2008.
Sorry...thats the way I see it.
Why does it have to be complicated?
>>For instance, to what extent is the Federation in Star Trek analogous to Big Interplanetary Government as say an Obama administration would imagine it, or a projection of old school Reaganesque Americanism simply expanded to a space federation where the union of different states is replaced by a union of different planets. <<
The very fact that you had this thought shows what's wrong, I think. I've always found it interesting how people immediately try to put such things into slanted political terms. In the Star Trek world, right is right and wrong is, well, wrong. People are accountable for there actions and the buck stops with those responsible. It's pretty simple. Not like today's world that's all about shifting blame and making things intentionally murky. If it's vague, then no one can blame me.
It not that hard. If you broke it, fix it. If you made it dirty, clean it up. The things we learned in kindergarten. Except we don't teach that anymore.
Why are there no Republicans in the Star Trek Movie?
It takes place in the future!
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