Ted Cruz: ‘Star Trek’s Captain Kirk was probably a Republican

[TexasTowelie]

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz offered some surprisingly strong opinions on the politics of “Star Trek” in an interview published Thursday in The New York Times Magazine, arguing “it is quite likely that Kirk is a Republican and Picard is a Democrat.”

“Let me do a little psychoanalysis,” Cruz says when asked about the fictional space captains from the landmark 1960s television series and its ”Next Generation” follow-up, which aired some 30 years later. “If you look at ‘’Star Trek: The Next Generation,’ it basically split James T. Kirk into two people. Picard was Kirk’s rational side, and William Riker was his passionate side. I prefer a complete captain. To be effective, you need both heart and mind.”

The Republican presidential candidate also waded into the politics of the “Star Trek” franchise, which has been praised for its progressive outlook on racial and gender relations, beginning with the original series, which broke ground with a diverse cast, humanitarian plot lines and television’s first interracial kiss.

“The original ‘Star Trek’ was grittier,” Cruz suggests. “Kirk is working class; Picard is an aristocrat. Kirk is a passionate fighter for justice; Picard is a cerebral philosopher. The original ‘Star Trek’ pressed for racial equality, which was one of its best characteristics, but it did so without sermonizing.”

Read more: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ted-cruz-star-treks-captain-kirk-was-probably-republican?cid=sm_fb_msnbc

[arcane1]

1. Picard is an "aristocrat" who grew up stomping grapes. n/t

[TexasTowelie]

2. Rebuttal:

William Shatner shoots down Ted Cruz: Captain Kirk is no Republican

Space: the final frontier of politics.

Just four months into his presidential voyage, controversial GOP Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has waded into an even more controversial debate — Who made the better starship captain on Star Trek, James Tiberius Kirk or Jean-Luc Picard?

Cruz, an original series fan, is unabashedly pro-Kirk — to the point where he layered some class warfare onto the debate. "Kirk is working class; Picard is an aristocrat," Cruz told the New York Times in an interview Thursday. "Kirk is a passionate fighter for justice; Picard is a cerebral philosopher ... I think it is quite likely that Kirk is a Republican and Picard is a Democrat."

That didn't sit well with a lot of Trek fans — not least of whom was Captain Kirk himself, aka Cruz' fellow Canadian, William Shatner.

William Shatner
✔
@WilliamShatner

Star Trek wasn't political. I'm not political; I can't even vote in the US. So to put a geocentric label on interstellar characters is silly
1:48 PM - 23 Jul 2015

Read more: http://mashable.com/2015/07/23/shatner-cruz-kirk-star-trek/

[Electric Monk]

3. 9 recs

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027004585

[LuvNewcastle]

4. If humanity is going to survive

that far into the future, there won't be any more Republicans, at least not as we know them today. You can't advance that far with large groups of people standing in the way of progress or trying to go backward at every turn.

[merrily]

5. So often, when Republicans do this, it backfires. They tried doing it with

Johnny Cash after he died and a Cash family member spoke up. Republicans are fact averse: Cash had Seeger on his show and defended Seeger's patriotism while others were blacklisting Seeger because of McCarthy. Doesn't sound like something a Republican would have done or even approved of. Hell, not many Democrats who depended on public opinion would have done it. Too risky. Eisenhower sure didn't speak out. He simply expanded the fuck out of Executive Privilege to shield his advisors and left the rest of USians twisting in the wind.

Kirk was happy in a society where money had become obsolete. He had no problem with immigration, even from one planet to another or with people of another color (even the green people who get hyperbolic mention, along with purple, as in, "I don't care if you're black, white, yellow, green or purple...." )

But, at least Johnny Cash was a real person. What the fuck is the point of purporting to decide which party a fictional character supposedly belonged to?

[lob1]

7. And tribbles were obviously illegal aliens. They were everywhere!

[longship]

8. Send them to the Klingons where they'll be no tribble at all.

[B Calm]

9. I think Cruz is confusing Boston Legal and Star Trek

[Humanist_Activist]

10. First off, most of what you see in Star Trek is the Military/Exploratory arm...

of the Federation, by default, its a government arm that provides for the people on its ships.

As far as Earth and the Federation itself, you see people own their own homes, businesses, etc. but at the same time its described as a paradise with no war, little violence, money isn't technically necessary. In fact, there's an inconsistency there, in some Star Trek films, its stated that money doesn't exist(Star Trek IV), in others and the shows, they mention "Credits" which are some type of currency. Not to mention in other shows, such as DS9, where gold-pressed latinum is considered a type of interstellar currency by at least a few empires/unions, such as the Ferengi, Bajor and the Cardassian Union.

Actually, DS9 is an interesting show, being placed just outside Federation jurisdiction, it showed an intersection of different economic ideas. For example, DS9 is a Federation owned space station that was built by the Cardassians, but under joint Federation-Bajorian administration. Quark, a prominent Ferengi bar owner leases his "spot" on the station from the Federation, they ask for no rent, apparently out of principle. At the same time, Quark operates his bar under the rules of the Ferengi Alliance and the FCA, for example, no negotiating with Unions, which his own brother attempted(and secretly succeeded) in organizing. I'll be honest and say that was the first time I remember seeing union organizing in a fictional show that was my contemporary.

Frankly, if you were to try to say that any particular character was a certain way or that the show portrayed any of the societies within it consistently, you would fail, at least in the details. The shows had multiple writers, and multiple visions, Gene Roddenberry himself was a leftist, and I think he set the tone, but his attempts at portraying the society he wanted kinda took a back seat to story. In addition, at least half of Trek is post Roddenberry.

From this Trekkie, the most I can say is that the Federation is, at the very least, supposed to portray a post-scarcity society, just from a technological point of view, you have replicators, energy that seems as abundant as hydrogen, given that, this cannot, by default, be a capitalistic society, at least not one we would recognize. Some of the movies and shows more or less admit this, the economy isn't based on scarcity like capitalism is, it can't be. Whether you could call a society where everything can be provided for practically for free a socialist society is the question. And what trade there is seems limited to items of artificial scarcity(hand-crafted, for example), or resources that can't be repicated or are sourced for energy(Deuterium-Anti-deuterium, dilithium crystals, the gold-press latinum, real estate, etc.).

[Xipe Totec]

11. If so, Ted Cruz is probably a Ferengi. nt

[DetlefK]

12. Oh yeah? Kirk sent Redshirts to unnecessary deaths. That's republican!

[mwrguy]

13. Malcolm Reynolds is a republican

Or at least a libertarian, according to Joss Whedon.