The Sinister Truth Behind Star Trek…*

(originally from November 2007)

Ever since the last pick-A-Blog I did about the end of the world and the role of technology in joblessness I have been thinking about something someone said. She commented, asking about the future such as Star Trek, and how all jobs are not only star fleet based, but also highly technological. She then posed this quandary: where are the stupid people? Are they dead – did the Governments simply through them into a desert and say “sorry bout your luck suckas!” or are they all being supported by the Federation equivalent of welfare.

As odd as this is, I have been thinking about this –  not only thinking, but I have actually discussed this with a couple (okay three) people as well. The first one, of course, is my father the king of all things Trekkie. Seriously, he even has the flippy communications device (though Scotty has never answered the call yet).  First of all, he says there are jobs outside of Starfleet, but he does agree they are all highly technological. This is explainable, of course. It’s not that the stupid people are dead, or bred out, but “fixed”. When kids are found unable to learn they take them to the hospital and the doctors bombard the brain electromagnetic waves on a certain frequency which the opens up the subjects ability to learn, ergo making the dumb people smart.

Obviously, he made this up. He denies it, of course and swears it’s in the super secret Trekkie handbook. I don’t believe him however, and when I argued with the improbability of this he pointed out two logical factors. One – the brain is nothing but electric signals so why not? And two, if they can run a little hand held thing over you to determine what flu you have they are surely good enough to adjust brains. Okay, maybe.

My brother agrees that it’s an insane theory, and says obviously those of sub par intelligence have been slaughtered. He, however, felt that they were used in labor camps to mine away the last of earth’s minerals and were then left to die, thereby removing stupidity from the gene pool and, should someone defective be born, they were cast off into the void to die as soon as it was discovered. This is basically the original “thrown into the desert” theory, albeit a little more complete.

So, I’ve been examining these theories. The electrowaves has some merit, but I don’t see it happening. It doesn’t allow for the lack of mentally handicapped or physically handicapped people that are in the shiny, happy future. It also does not account for the fact that no one is fat, ugly, bald, flabby, or in any way truly unattractive. (and don’t point out that Scotty got fat when he got old. That was a complete accident on the producer’s part, and nothing they could have foreseen!) So, I think we can rule it out.

The “thrown into the desert” accounts for these things, but it doesn’t take humans into account. We like to feel good, and the knowledge we’re killing people might upset our breakfast. No, I think there would be uprisings and protests if this were implemented. One could argue that perhaps there were and they have all been put down, but I think there’d have been whispers of it – like a cancerous growth slowly spreading beneath the cheerful façade of the Federation.

Also taking humans into account I think we can rule out the assistance program. Hell, working class people I know don’t even want socialized medicine for the fear they will “have to pay for some bum! I can’t even pay for myself!” completely missing the point that they would also be paid for. No, people want to eliminate programs and funding, not add more, so I don’t think that’s it either.

So, what is it then? I think it’s something at once more sinister, yet more common place and already accepted today. As I’ve mentioned already, they have those lovely little devices that can scan you without a sound and determine everything that’s wrong with you? Those are the key.

Picture this: Mary Sue and Tommy, our all American future couple with the bright cheery faces find out that they are going to have a baby, and so they make an appointment immediately. They get in within the week and are soon in a comfortably sterile waiting room that attempts to be reminiscent of their plastic, rubberized, biodegradable home, but somehow fails. Stale musak is pumped over the speakers as they are ushered in to wait for the doctor. Nervous, Mary Sue sits on the examining table while Tommy flips idly through the pages of an electronic magazine on his hand held device.  At last the doctor, kindly looking yet with traces of having been attractive in his youth, steps in. He smiles and they banter a bit before he gets back to business. Taking the scanner from his pocket he runs it over Mary Sue’s stomach and waits for the results. He shakes his head as he gives them the bad news: this child has the genes for obesity. Mary and Tommy are crushed, but they know what must be done, and so the next appointment is scheduled. Within a week Mary Sue is back in a sterile waiting room and an hour later is back on the way home – the pregnancy conveniently terminated with her comfort at the fore of everyone’s mind.

Sound insane? Sound impossible? Sound reprehensible? Why? Babies now die for less, don’t they? Change the scanner to a blood test and instead of the gene for obesity give it a chance of a birth defect.  Take away the medical implication and change it to a couple who just doesn’t want children. Abortion is already an accepted part of our society and used, by some, as a birth control method. “Pregnant? Scared? Kill it and move on with your life like you never made a mistake! Why take responsibility for your actions?”

We are a throwaway society, as the Honda commercial is capitalizing on. TV broke? Throw it out. Spouse a pain? Throw them out. Pet a bother? Kick ‘em out. Impending baby -  well bye-bye! Why should we spend one moment having to do something we don’t want to do? Why shouldn’t we woman be able to have sex with every man we can find and not worry? Don’t women deserve the sexual freedom? Don’t they deserve the right to get so fucked up they don’t even know what guy they slept with and never have to worry about a consequence? What about careers? Babies screw those right up! Well, maybe I’m mistaken, but I understood that was what birth control was for.

I recently read an article in Time magazine that leaned towards discrediting family planning centers that discourage abortion. Several abortion doctors/proponents interviewed were outraged because these clinics show the pregnant women what their fetus looks like – how dare they! No, not pictures or movies of real aborted fetuses, but little rubber, plastic toy versions of a perfectly happy fetus and then – and here’s the true evil – an ultrasound. Yes, these clinics dare to show women that their baby is indeed a baby and not just an inconvenience and so for that they should burn in hell immortal!

Maybe I’m cold and prejudiced but I say if you’re gonna do it you should be able to LOOK at it. I’m all for horrific pictures of what an aborted baby looks like. We see the dead spattered across our TV every night – soldiers and “insurgents” alike. I didn’t kill them, but I have to see them because my country did. But if I want to murder my baby I don’t have to look at that. That might make me feel guilty – not that guilt is the natural response the human mind feels when it KNOWS it has done something it feels is WRONG.  How many pictures of concentration camp victims have I seen – have ALL of us seen – in the course of school. We were shown it so that we would SEE how terrible it was and never allow it to be repeated…. yet we label abortion pictures or movies of abortions being performed too “horrific for the woman’s delicate psyche”.

When a hunter marches through the snow to hunt he has to wait, he takes his gun, he loads it and he looks at his prey. A soldier sees the man he kills. A police officer looks into the eyes of a criminal, even the people who do state executions SEE who they kill – but not a woman with an abortion. We must keep her protected and wrapped in cotton lest she later feel guilty over what she’s done. If a hunter can’t stand to see the deer before he shoots it he quits hunting. If the executioner can’t look at his victim he quits the job, so if a woman can’t look at it I say she can’t have an abortion. Let’s let her take responsibility for what she is doing, let her SEE. After all, even modern surgeries come with pictures. My mother has a lovely spread on her gall bladder removal.

But, if we did this, if we made them LOOK and they decided not to have the child then we’d have a sudden burst of unwanted and abused children… Has anyone looked around? Read a paper, look online, turn on the news. Kids are raped, beaten, neglected and abused every day. My husband worked in a boy’s home with boys who were mentally/physically handicapped. One had been tied in the basement as a child and fed scraps they threw at him like a dog. For fun they’d hack at him with a knife. Another is crippled; his legs and arms bent at odd angles because as a baby in his crib his mother let his older brother and his father sexually abuse him along with breaking all of his limbs and then they left him lay so that the bones healed all twisted and wrong.  Another one was abandoned as a toddler and lived for six months by eating tree bark and twigs before authorities found him with toes so frostbitten they had to be removed.

And what about the kids who aren’t “in the system”? A little girl I used to know had all of her finger tips burned off with a curling iron before her grandmother rescued her. I knew another little boy who couldn’t even sleep in his own room because the dog would piss on his bed and no one cared enough to clean it up.  How is abortion helping children? How is it saving them from horrific lives?

It isn’t. It’s saving their mothers from having to face up to reality and change their lives. It’s helping the woman, whose body and whose choice it is, to keep doing what it is she wanted to do and not have to stop and think about someone else. It’s telling everyone that human life is so cheap that it isn’t worth more than the bill the abortion clinic charges. Don’t want this baby? That’s okay, get rid of it and later you can have another one.

Disposable diapers, disposable dishes, disposable life. That’s not only the future – it’s already here.

 

Fav Song of the Moment – Rainy Monday – Shiny Toy Guns

PS.  and before I get any comment I am not discussing medical abortions where a doctor comes to you and says “either you abort the baby or die.” That, my friend, is a bit different then “I want my career” or “I don’t want children but am too lazy to bother with birth control” or “Well, he doesn’t want the baby so I’ll get rid of it” or any other of the countless, stupid, excuses.  I wanted to work that in somewhere but frankly I couldn’t make it fit.  :P

*As a Star Trek fan, I do not claim to assert that the ever fictional and fun future is really rife with abortions. It simply worked as a good vehicle for this blog. No Trekkie bashing intended.

 

Tags: Abortion, futrue, Pregnancy, star trek, Starfleet, Television, Trekkie