September 8th, 1966.
Two Jews, a Black woman, a Canadian-Irish man, a doctor from the Deep South, a Japanese man and a Russian boldly went where no one had ever gone before. They represented a world beyond our time, where none of their nationalities, races, or genders were impediments to their success.
At the time Star Trek first hit the airwaves, just over 20 years removed from a world war that saw every group represented on the bridge at each others throats, it was the wokest woke shit that ever woked. Today it would be derided as “diversity porn” or some other nonsense. “Mortal enemies” working together for the common good of the human race?! Racists of our world think warp drive is more attainable.
Star Trek has always been a morality play, a political statement, a social manifesto. Gene Roddenberry, Trek’s creator, was a secular humanist who believed we could reach the stars once we got past our irrational hatreds. The ones who complain that the Trek being produced today is “too liberal” absolutely miss the entire fucking point. That original crew was radically liberal at the time they voyaged among the stars. And in being so bold, they inspired a generation to hope and strive for something more. A future where Earth is a paradise, greed and violence nearly eliminated, our near-constant state of war now just a shameful past to learn from and avoid.
Roddenberry himself knew this was probably not going to happen in his lifetime, regardless of the show’s influence. Trek’s lore includes an unspeakably brutal “World War III” and a post-apocalyptic era that lasts decades. He surmised we would have to be brought very, very low before our Phoenix could rise from the ashes.
And that is where we find ourselves today. Carefully avoiding WW3 (or carefully avoiding saying we’re already in WW3), hatred and violence at shocking levels, our planet crying out and lashing us for our abuses against it, the bulk of humanity scrabbling out meager lives from the scraps of the ultra-wealthy.
September 3rd, 2024.
Gabriel Bell, a Black man living in the “Sanctuary A” district of San Francisco, USA, dies in a violent riot, giving his life to protect hostages captured in the mayhem. The brutality of the riots and the sacrifice of Bell proves to be a “watershed” moment in history. The districts — a way of keeping the poor, ill, and undesirable out of the public eye — are closed, and the world takes a long, hard look at itself and its priorities. According to Captain Benjamin Sisko, this event was pivotal, not only to the advancement of humanity, but to the creation of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets.
But, none of this happened in our reality. The death of George Floyd in 2020 was strikingly close, sparking riots in nearly every major metropolitan city in America. Happening concurrently with a devastating viral outbreak, it seemed that sweeping social reform was not only necessary, but imminent.
Instead of seizing this moment as an opportunity for positive change, however, we doubled down on greed and violence. The ultra-wealthy of our world grew even richer, their grasp on power nearly absolute. The marginalized kicked further down the muddy slope. Anti-trans legislation swept over the nation like a wave. Then antisemitism. Logic, wisdom, and empathy mocked openly by all sides, war on all fronts, blood gushing from even our schools in a torrent of red.
September 4th, 2024.
A 14-year old student is missing from his Apalachee High School class in Winder, GA. A concerned, nearly frantic call from his mother has the administration searching the building for her son, but then what she feared is made reality. Her son opens fire with an AR-15 assault rifle given to him as a gift by his father, killing two students and two teachers. Father and son now stand trial for their crimes, a community mourns and buries its dead, and a nation does its best to immediately forget and move on, just like it has 416 times since 1999.
September 5th, 2024.
J. D. Vance, the Republican Party’s Vice Presidential candidate, calls school shootings a “fact of life” just a day after the tragedy. Following his party’s playbook flawlessly, he dismisses the need for gun control, instead calling for more security, more guns. He blames mental illness for the violence, but does not call for more funding for mental health. Many Jews are prepared to vote for this man, in the hopes he and Presidential candidate Trump will protect them from an increasingly irrational, antisemitic and violent far-left.
September 6th, 2024.
A three year old shoots himself in the face with an unsecured firearm in Detroit, but is expected to live.
September 7th, 2024.
A man opens fire along a stretch of Interstate 75 in Kentucky, injuring five people. He is still at large as this is written.
September 8th, 2024.
I sit down to write this on Star Trek Day. I face homelessness. My undiagnosed autism coupled with cPTSD from an abusive family and my own share of barely-missed bullets has made me (apparently) unemployable. I can barely get the social workers tasked with keeping people like me afloat to respond to communication. On the rare occasion they do, they say they can’t help me. Not enough housing. Whatever I need isn’t covered. Whoever I am is outside the scope of whoever they serve. 30% of trans people in this country are unemployed. 85% of neurodivergent people are unemployed. And it’s honestly hard to know whether the cPTSD or the insane behavior I witness from my fellow humans on a daily basis is making it harder and harder to trust any of you. Twenty-five years ago I watched the aftermath of the Columbine shooting unfold in my own high school class. I never thought I would have to see 416 more.
Later that week, I very likely watched “Strange Bedfellows,” an episode from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s final season and then “Juggernaut,” an episode from Voyager’s fifth season. I did so in the damp, flood-prone basement of my childhood home, just yards away from where bullets from a drive-by shooting in 1988 entered our garage. I very likely heard my father’s shouts overhead throughout both episodes, felt his heavy footfalls as he angrily paced and yelled at my mother for no reason whatsoever. Star Trek gave me the hope that this would not always be my life. Star Trek gave me the strength to persevere. Ad astra per aspera. Even if I could not realistically find my home among the stars, I would find my “Starfleet,” my family, the place where I belong. I named myself “Defiant” in honor of Gabriel Be…I mean…Benjamin Sisko’s ship and to always remind me of Jadzia Dax, the Defiant’s pilot and all-around badass. I have saved every empty vial of estrogen because “you don’t just throw something like this away! (SIR NO SIR!)” I hope to someday get Trill tattoos. Hoped to.
I have spent much of the last four years not knowing whether I would survive another week, let alone to get those tattoos. To see a better future.
I spend this Star Trek Day feeling more like the crew of Voyager. Far from my stars, uncertain if I will ever see home. Because I am scared that J.D. Vance is right. That too many people have accepted this status quo is a “fact of life.” But they fail to realize that if we cannot prioritize and protect our Next Generations, we will never touch the sky…let alone the stars.
So I give the Vulcan salute, based on the Jewish Priestly Blessing of the descendants of Aaron, and I say “Live Long and Prosper.” Tears well in my eyes.
I hope we do. I fear we won’t.
