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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29564 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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I think Mike is keeping his power level hidden.

He’s Polish and openly believes in ghosts. He’ll be back in the pews and reciting the creed soon, if he’s not already.

RLM’s media criticism is pretty traditional as it is. For a movie to work, it needs a certain narrative structure, should have setups and payoffs, etc. One of their compliments they give is “it’s a movie” where so much of what they review lacks the necessary elements to even be called a movie.

Underneath it all they’re really talking about truth, beauty, and goodness.

Might be but I don't think he's keeping too much hidden. Seems like a slightly lapsed traditional liberal that's keeping his head down to me.

I'd agree with that. But I don't think he seems right wing. He is always talking about how much he loves the Star Trek next gen liberal "positive future" values. There's a lot of progressivism that is kinda baked into that worldview.

I know that’s the general consensus. But it seems to me it misses the huge point that technological change likely changes economic systems. If you move to what seems like a post scarcity, then you likely abandon capitalism. But that doesn’t mean you abandon capitalism before you move to a post scarcity economy. That is, ST’s (incoherent) communism doesn’t address today.

I'd say there's very little progressivism baked into Star Trek (at least up to ds9, which is the only stuff I've seen). There's no notion of affirmative action. People are subordinate to their superiors. Race and gender is simply not salient at all.

Here's the classic scene: https://youtube.com/watch?v=HKII3sFUCgs?feature=shared

Acting commander Data (a (simulacrum of) a white man) takes Whorf (an Underrepresented Minority in Starfleet) into his office to give him a dressing down about being insubordinate. Whorf takes it like a man and apologizes. Could such a scene be made today?

Race and gender is simply not salient at all.

Relative to the time period this was extremely progressive.

There's a reason Martin luther king jr. famously publicly fanboyed over star trek.

I think the main difference is you're used to post 2010 ish idea's of DEI, and those are definitely much different from the 1960s progressivism in star trek

It seems to me that "treat people as individuals rather than members of groups" is the sine qua non of classical liberalism. Progressivism must necessarily be about the Marxist struggle of the oppressed (groups) versus the oppressor (group).

And that sort of classical liberalism was controversial in the 60's when Star Trek was doing it with the OS and, if not controversial, at least something people had in mind as a sore point when TNG was doing it in the 80's.

And that sort of classical liberalism was controversial in the 60's

And how is that relevant? I don't think progressives should get to claim movents from the past, that they are now vehemently rejecting.

Progressive just wasn't a word used much at the time, but the kind of liberalism TOS/TNG Star Trek embodied could have pretty uncontroversially been called 'progressive'. It's not that modern progressives are claiming some past non-progressive ideology as their own, it's that the word 'progressive' itself has morphed in meaning since the 1960's (and before...), to the point where most people who would identify as 'progressive' today are really just Leftists. Most modern 'liberals' in the old progressive sense are just confused and can't tell this has happened.

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Sure, but it's different from progressivism.

It was at the time, although progressivism was a dead word that only got revived in the 90's after conservatives succeeded in making 'liberal' a dirty word.

It seems to me that "treat people as individuals rather than members of groups" is the sine qua non of classical liberalism.

Some would argue that it goes even further than that. If anything this is the sine qua non of enlightenment values and post modernism (of which Marxism is a sub school) is by its nature post/anti-enlightenment.

I don't think there is necessarily a contradiction there, especially for nostalgic media we loved in our youth. You can simultaneously enjoy the utopian idealism of a sci-fi show and don't have that reflect what you believe what current policy would be effective, especially not in all areas.

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