*cuts to Starfleet, the Progressive Volunteer force of hippy soldier-scientists who see off fascists, Eldritch horrors and actual Gods at least twice a week*

"oh bit Starfleet aren't competent, what about" I'm sorry the Federation + Starfleet managed to defeat a militarist warrior society through the power of friendship and post-scarcity economics, and then did it again a century later.

These guys accidentally developed a weapon of mass destruction and went "oh boy can't wait to end Interstellar land shortages and food scarcity"

THEY BEAT ROBO-CTHULU WITH THE POWER OF FATHERLY LOVE

Oh, great, this is going places. Read @EoMProject and donate to a charity or something

@BadSocialism I'd certainly say the Dominion War has damaged the Federation in some ways as we've seen in the Post Dominion War stuff, but I still think most of the Federation captains believe in the old standards.

@BadSocialism The wishy washy liberals are willing to do whatever it takes to preserve their utopia, and they can live with it.

@BadSocialism Also... they don't defeat the Dominion through pure military might alone or because of Section 31. They win because of the relationship they built with one of the Changelings, and how he uses his cultural connections with both to bind them into deescalation.

@BadSocialism In DS9 the Federation ends up as the strongest power in the quadrant, with closer ties to its former imperial enemies and with the most capitalist society there undergoing reforms led by a Trade Union leader who's very friendly with the Federation.

@BadSocialism The entire point of DS9 is that when the Federation and it's ideals are put to the test the good *can* win in the end. You *can* have a system where corruption and authoritarianism get weeded out because people believe in doing what's right.

@BadSocialism 1) Nitpicking, I know but it's "spacefaring," like seafaring. Space fairing has a Space Ferris Wheel and a Space Tilt-A-Whirl. 2) What are these right wing values that are so necessary? They never explicitly say.

@BadSocialism And then they were saved by the secret fascists in section 31 who infected the changelings with a biological weapon. It's always ambiguous.

@BadSocialism These people arent liberals, they only believe in maximizing personal liberty within the confines of universal cooperation and order. A liberal starfleet would have tried to negotiate with the borg and then immediately become facsict as "the only way to win"

@BadSocialism TNG is about how lefties would prefer to win. DS9 is about what lefties will do to win if you wanna fuck around and find out.

@BadSocialism DS9 is Starfleet at its worst, and it's still so much nicer than us. Their big evil plan involves killing one senator to get the Romulans on their side, and that helps lead to a more lasting peace with the Romulans!

@BadSocialism

@BadSocialism People think the "wishy-washy" part is liberals' weakness. Not totally untrue, but it's more like the handbrake: whenever they release the handbrake that car, currently idling, becomes a death machine. Hell, it's why they usually keep the handbrake on!

@BadSocialism Are you an iain banks fan by any chance? The Player of Games strikes me as particularly good for this - where a Culture citizen develops a new strategy for playing an empires game where basically he realises he needs to play as the Culture to win

@BadSocialism I guess we're ignoring how, when push-comes-to-shove, the Federation is willing to break any rule it wants in order to maintain it's hegemony?

@BadSocialism Like the federation won the Dominion war with their values mostly in tact. Individuals broke their values (sisko) but not the federation itself