April 21, 2026

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: Misunderstanding Mr. Spock.

In the wake of the cancellation of yet another ridiculous “Star Trek” property, this time the hilariously cringe-inducing “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,” sane audiences are once again asking the question “why can’t anyone get ‘Star Trek’ right?” The answer may be as simple as this… it’s because the studio’s leadership, as well as the creatives so far tasked with bringing new “Star Trek” stories to life, do not understand what “Star Trek” is, they only know what they wish it was.

These days, Hollywood creatives seem to want to write overtly about their own personal politics more than they want to tell great stories. In the Trump era many of Hollywood’s biggest writers, directors and actors believe deeply that the most important thing they can do with the positions in Hollywood to which they have ascended is to use their art to advocate for Progressive policies. It is the Great Cause which has finally brought meaning to their lives.

The problem is that this approach creates terrible drama every time it’s tried… a truth to which Hollywood has remained uniquely allergic over the last twenty years, in part because they believe “Star Trek” is an exception to this iron rule of story. To the modern Hollywood Progressive, the original “Star Trek” series was one which successfully combined exciting sci-fi adventure stories with constant Progressive political agitation. This is a tragic misunderstanding, but one in which Progressives believe so deeply, they have convinced themselves not only that “Star Trek” can continue to agitate for their preferred political outcomes while succeeding as a piece of popular entertainment, but that it must, because Progressive politics is built into the DNA of the “Star Trek” universe and you cannot have one without the other.

The original Star Trek was JFK’s muscular liberalism projected into space.  The young JFK became the young Captain James T. Kirk. Kennedy’s “New Frontier” became “The Final Frontier.” Trek was gunboat diplomacy, in space. Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon, his best writer-producer both served in WWII; Roddenberry would go on to become a Los Angeles policeman. Coon created Star Trek’s “United Federation of Planets” as the intergalactic equivalent of the United States of America.

As James Lileks wrote in 2007 in a piece titled, “A Conservative Trek,” “You could say [Capt. Kirk] did his part for God and Country, but of course Trek believed in neither:”

Nevertheless, the best Trek was conservative: it was rooted in the unchanging nature of man, be they hooting hominids on the plains of Earth throwing rocks at prey, or civilized spacefarers Money, power, lust, war: These were the constants, and Star Trek knew they’d follow us to infinity and beyond. At best we could find enlightened, savvy ways to avoid the pointless fights. But some people only understand a photon torpedo up the dorsal vent port, and we’d best be prepared to deal with them. The Federation, after all, had something called General Order 24, which called for the total destruction of a planet’s surface if the civilization was considered a threat to the Federation. As Vader might have said: Impressive.

Kirk actually invoked General Order 24, in “A Taste of Armageddon.” He used it as a threat, and didn’t carry it out. You can imagine his relief; the paperwork alone would have been a nightmare. But he would have done it if he had to, and not just for the reputation you get back home at the Officer’s Club. Not for Kirk the niceties of diplomacy: If he had to violate a treaty, he’d do it. If he had to save a civilization from the lifeless machinations of an ancient operating system, he’d harangue its computer until it smoked and crashed. In “The Arena,” Kirk didn’t win the battle against a rubber-suit Gorn because they hammered out a six-point Roadmap to Peace. Granted, he got the thumbs-up from the League of Judgmental Effeminate Aliens because he didn’t cave in the Gorn’s head with a stone. But prior to that, he nailed him in the chest with an improvised cannon that shot diamonds. In a cannon-free zone, no less.

All of which is a reminder of how closer to the center did the Kennedy era hug before his assassination, Vietnam, Nixon, and eventually an obsession with identity politics drove Hollywood Democrats completely insane.

UPDATE:

Tweet continues, “Actor Robert Picardo reacted: ‘Not enough people had found us. He said, you know, that the reason you’ll hear is that we never cracked the top 10 shows in streaming. Maybe they wouldn’t have heard about it because there was really no advertising push behind our show.’ Are these Star Trek creators living in an echo chamber bubble?”

Having worked on the Rick Berman-era Voyager, Picardo has to know he’s gaslighting fans of that era Trek.

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

DRAIN THE SWAMP:

Full details here.

Posted at 4:35 pm by Stephen Green

BREAKING:

Trump: “Based on the fact that the Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and, in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are concluded, one way or the other.”

So the regime not showing up in Pakistan for the talks might have been less about intransigence and more about political chaos.

Regardless, the blockade remains in place, and that’s the most important pressure point.

UPDATE:

If — again, if — the IRGC has seized what’s left of the civilian government leadership, it’s hard to see how the ceasefire extension lasts very long. Those guys are hardcore revolutionary Islamists.

Posted at 4:25 pm by Stephen Green

MORE ON ACTBLUE:

Maybe the entire Democratic Party needs to come under RICO scrutiny.

Posted at 4:04 pm by Stephen Green

CORN, POPPED:

Posted at 3:03 pm by Stephen Green

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Exit quote: America “evolved in a very different direction, and upon separation, with some struggle, arrived at our own form of governance. With an emphasis on individual freedom our fellows in the greater Anglosphere lack. Once you notice all of that, a lot of it starts to make more sense.”

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

THEODORE DALRYMPLE: We Shall Not Fight on the Beaches.

In 1973, Jean Raspail, who died aged 94 in 2020, published his dystopian novel The Camp of the Saints, for which he is now mostly remembered (certainly outside of France, though he was the author of many other well-considered novels and travelogues, and narrowly missed election to the Académie française). The Camp of the Saints is a book that refuses to lie down, so to speak, despite attempts to render it invisible or make it go away.

* * * * * * * *

Immigrants are not just immigrants. What they bring with them is as important as what they are offered by the host country. If what they bring with them is an evangelizing religion that claims, however fatuously, to be the answer to all of mankind’s little problems, a religion moreover that has a very strong hold over them and that is maintained by an effective system of social ostracism in the event of dissent, they will obviously have more difficulty integrating than if they have no such religion.

Raspail’s flawed novel is an illustration of an elementary political principle. For a liberal democracy to work, there must be a demos; for there to be a demos, there must be something more in common among them than living geographically cheek-by-jowl (without at the same time demanding an absolute uniformity). To import huge numbers of people who do not share, and indeed are resistant to sharing, the minimum that holds a demos together is inimical to liberal democracy.

In this most important sense Jean Raspail was visionary, even if he did not correctly identify the source of the greatest threat. Perhaps the most revealing thing in the book is his account, in the essay that precedes the novel, of how prominent political figures either ignored or repudiated The Camp of the Saints in public, but agreed with it in private. It proved to be a disastrous disjunction.

It’s the good Dr. Dalrymple, so read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Éric Zemmour’s The Suicide of France. The definitive account of France after de Gaulle is now available in English.

UPDATE (4/21/26): The same lefties who rail against banned books everywhere rejoiced yesterday when Amazon banned the paperback edition of Ethan Rundell’s 2025 translation of The Camp of the Saints. Amazon has since made the book available for purchase again: Amazon Didn’t Ban The Camp Of The Saints Because It’s ‘Offensive’ But Because It Resonates.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

A VERY PUBLIC EDUCATION:

Posted at 2:02 pm by Stephen Green