Star Trek was always prescient. Re-watching the fourth season of Deep Space Nine I couldn't help but notice how uncannily the writers and producers had predicted what the War On Terror™ would be like a decade later. And the Ferengi-centered episodes of that show, particularly in the later seasons, gave viewers a pretty good idea of what the Republican economic platform would resemble in the second decade of the 21st century.
But today I want to talk about one of the Original Series movies, the last one, in relation to the #47Traitors letter that everyone is talking about.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is part Tom Clancy, part Agatha Christie; part political thriller, part whodunit. It involves a conspiracy among warmongers at the highest levels of Starfleet and the Klingon and Romulan hierarchies to sabotage peace talks between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.
[For the four people who haven't seen this movie yet, spoilers below the fold.]
Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy are framed for murdering the Klingon Chancellor, tried and sent to a penal colony while Spock and the Enterprise crew attempt to figure out what really happened. It turns out the conspirators have a mole on the Enterprise: Spock's protégée, Lt. Valeris, who we find out recruited two crew members to carry out the assassination and later killed them when they failed to dispose of the evidence. After Kirk and McCoy are rescued from the prison planet, she is caught when Kirk and Spock trick her into thinking the two crewmen are still alive and about to confess.
On the bridge of the Enterprise, Kirk interrogates the young lieutenant in an effort to find out who set them up. She defiantly reminds Kirk that he himself said that "Klingons cannot be trusted," borne out by the fact that "[t]hey conspired with us to assassinate their own Chancellor." Kirk asks bluntly, "Who is 'us'?" Her response:
"Everyone who stands to lose from peace."
The more I think about this #47Traitors letter, the more I think about Star Trek VI and Valeris' line. The letter to Iran, the Netanyahu speech before Congress, and the things I'm hearing from my Jewish liberal friends who seem to become far-right hard-core Zionists when it comes to Israel, all revolve around one intractable theme: paraphrasing Valeris paraphrasing Kirk, "Iranians cannot be trusted." No matter what deal is reached, Iran will not honor it. No matter what Iran agrees not to do, it will do anyway. The only way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons is... well, no one is saying, really. The implication is that the last half of that sentence is "...to blow large holes in their country and kill large numbers of their people." If there's any actual, practical, non-rhetorical thing short of that being proposed, I've missed it.
Captain Kirk had every reason to hate and distrust the Klingons, who inter alia killed his son three movies before. Through him (and one of William Shatner's better performances) we see the evolution from unthinking hate and distrust to a willingness to at least consider something other than that, because it was getting him and the Federation nowhere. He admits to McCoy that he was "terrified" at the prospect of abolishing the Neutral Zone and ending the long-running military standoff. "I was [so] used to hating Klingons," he says, that "it never even occurred to me to take [the Chancellor] at his word" about forging a lasting peace. Later Kirk confesses to Spock, "I couldn't get past the death of my son," and that the Chancellor "had to die before I understood how prejudiced I was."
I suppose it could be argued that some Americans, and many Israelis, have similar reasons to hate and distrust the Iranians. Like Kirk, they are more "terrified" by the prospect of peace than by that of war.
What I think is going on with the #47Traitors letter, is that "everyone who stands to lose from peace" in both the United States and Israel is just as "terrified" as Kirk was at the prospect of peace, albeit for slightly different or additional reasons. One thing that is missing from the conspiracy in Star Trek VI is the economic motivation for war. One admiral at the beginning of the film expresses concern about "mothballing the Starfleet" but we don't get the sense that there's a profit motive behind any of the specific conspirators (including a Starfleet admiral, a Klingon general and a Romulan ambassador). In Gene Roddenberry's universe, the profit motive will be, if not entirely gone, no longer the driving force in people's lives.
Nevertheless, there are actors in the U.S., Israel, Iran, and around the world, who clearly and for whatever reasons "stand to lose from peace." I would not be the least bit surprised if the #47Traitors letter was ordered up by Republican paymasters, particularly those in the military-industrial complex, who see their potential windfall from a war in Iran slipping away the closer we get to a peaceful, non-violent resolution. Would 47 GOP Senators have done something like this on their own, without being coerced by their paymasters? Could those paymasters be threatening to kick those Senators off the gravy train if they don't get the war they want, that they are so handsomely paying the GOP to get for them?
Cynical, yes, and it's a little dodgy for me to use question marks like that, like Fox does, to make pure speculation seem like credible fact. But I would think there has to be a motivation for such reckless, irresponsible and stupid behavior beyond pure and puerile political spite.
Speaking of prescience, Star Trek VI was made just before, and released just after, the collapse of the Soviet Union, so the parallels with current events at that time were pure Star Trek. But in a larger sense, and in retrospect, the movie is about overcoming decades upon decades of conflict, prejudice and mistrust, both personal and political, between nations and peoples; about stepping back for a moment from a perpetual stance and mindset of war-war-war and hate-hate-hate to literally "give peace a chance." Some of us can do that. Some can't. Others won't. And it is just a movie.
Still, I think what's happening now is an analogue of what happened in Star Trek VI. Warmongers in America, Israel, and perhaps in Iran as well, are attempting to sabotage peace talks and foment the continuation and/or escalation of a permanent war stance. The #47Traitors are, and represent, "everyone who stands to lose from peace."