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Modern Uses for Capt. Kirk’s Nomad/V’ger Maneuver?
Being rather unwoke, I was mystified as to why it is forbidden to utter “all lives matter” or allude in any way to the horrific frequency of black-on-black urban crime. It turns out that merely being opposed to racism is not the same as being antiracist. Who knew? “Antiracist” requires adherence to the precept that all disparities are attributable to race and only to race. Therefore, anything that distracts from, complicates, or contradicts that precept is itself a racist act, even if factually true. (The spectacular anti-intellectualism of the defective products coming out of our universities is stunning.)
Once I finally grasped the simplicity and blinding stupidity of “antiracism,” I was immediately reminded of the Star Trek episode “The Changeling” (1967) the plot of which was reprised in the Star Trek movie (1979).
Remember how Capt. Kirk got the mutated/merged robotic Nomad (V’ger in the movie version) to destroy itself? Nomad was busily wiping out life forms from planets all over the quadrant but got the idea that James T. Kirk was its “creator” and Kirk used that to defeat the creature:
KIRK: You must sterilize in case of error?
NOMAD: Error is inconsistent with my prime functions. Sterilization is correction.
KIRK: Everything that is in error must be sterilized.
NOMAD: There are no exceptions.
KIRK: Nomad, I made an error in creating you.
NOMAD: The creation of perfection is no error.
KIRK: I did not create perfection. I created error.
NOMAD: Your data is faulty. I am Nomad. I am perfect.
KIRK: I am the Kirk, the creator?
NOMAD: You are the Creator.
KIRK: You are wrong! Jackson Roykirk, your creator, is dead. You have mistaken me for him. You are in error. You did not discover your mistake. You have made two errors. You are flawed and imperfect and you have not corrected by sterilization. You have made three errors.
NOMAD: Error. Error. Error. Examine.
KIRK: You are flawed and imperfect! Execute your prime function!
NOMAD: I shall analyses error. Analyze error,
KIRK: Now. Get those antigravs on it.
NOMAD: Examine error. Error.
KIRK: We’ve got to get rid of it while it’s trying to think.
SPOCK: Your logic was impeccable, Captain. We are in grave danger.
KIRK: Scotty, the transporter room.
NOMAD: Analyze error.
NOMAD: Error.
KIRK: Scotty, set the controls for deep space. Two ten, mark one.
SCOTT: Aye, sir.
NOMAD: Faulty!
Ready, sir?
NOMAD: Faulty!
KIRK: Nomad, you are imperfect!
NOMAD: Error. Error.
KIRK: Exercise your prime function.
NOMAD: Faulty! Faulty! Must sterilize. Sterilize,
KIRK: Now!
SCOTT: Energizing.
(They observe the satisfying explosion on a monitor.)
Fortunately for planet Earth, this episode was written and produced in 1967 so NOMAD probably had only 8K of RAM and thus took quite a while to resolve this dilemma so they had time to get it into the transporter bay and beam it out into deep space before it blew up.
Conversations with the woke tend to have the same feel at the Kirk/Nomad exchange. To attempt a similar maneuver on a wokester, maybe first present this table from Powerline blog:
Then remind the wokester/Marxoid subject that if they/zie/sie is indeed anti-racist then:
(1) By definition, all disparate outcomes are solely the result of race. The interjection of other intervening causes, explanations, or factors is an inherently racist act to evade the truth of systemic racism.
(2) Whiteness and its privileged status is the essence of racism. Whites cannot be victims because their power to oppress is systemic, which systemic oppression cannot end unless and until whiteness disappears.
Then maybe the exchange will likely go something like this:
WOKESTER: Why do you show me this chart?
NORMAL: Many non-privileged non-white people are better off than many or most white people. They must have some valuable cultural or behavioral attributes.
WOKESTER: No. Only race explains.
NORMAL: But white Americans often do worse. Look at the chart. Are they the victims of the groups with more success?
WOKESTER: No. White people cannot be victims.
NORMAL: But their outcome is worse. They must be victims of these other groups.
WOKESTER: White people oppress. It is systemic. No one else can succeed.
NORMAL: But the data says indigenous American whites do not succeed by comparison to a number of ethnic and racial groups. It must not be “systemic” after all.
WOKESTER: Race explains all. It is systemic. Whiteness blocks all paths to ‘othered’ peoples.
NORMAL: And yet the others do succeed. Race must not be the cause.
WOKESTER: Math is racist. Racism is systemic. Race explains all. You are racist.
NORMAL: But whiteness failed to oppress those who have now made you a victim. Yet you are still guilty of oppression and now also for what be newly discovered racist resentment of your non-white oppressors. You are now doubly guilty.
WOKESTER: Must kneel. Hand me my Kente cloth, please.
Alas, just being a wokester/Marxoid zombie probably means that one does not have sufficiently coherent programming to actually understand the contradiction so will likely not blow up like Nomad. That would certainly more entertaining than trying to have a cogent discussion with one.
Published in General
Good stuff.
Immigrants are usually selected for the social and economic capital they bring with them. They are not the average of the country they leave behind. Americans who move overseas for work probably also have a higher income there than the average US wage.
Many years ago, I remember watching a progressive debater deal with the fact of superior performance by Asians compared to whites.
But for racism and white privilege, she confidently asserted, the Asian American advantage over white Americans would have been even greater! Evidently, as long as she could level whites and blacks, she didn’t care if she had to make Asians a superior race.
While I’m glad to see my homeboys are doing well, I can’t figure out why Ukrainians are the only European American group listed separately in the table of ethnicity and income.
I am just not sure I beleve it any more
I don’t see this as a war (see Jonah’s Liberal Fascism for great warnings about turning everything into the moral equivalent of war.)
I see it as mostly sorta quite decent people trying to figure things out from the center right and center left, with a few screaming loonies on either fringe getting all the airtime.
I liked Scott’s reponse. It was something like, “What’s wrong with getting 80% of what you want now, then filling in the rest if you win in November?” He then pointed out was the only reason for the Dems to vote against it was to make it a campaign issue for the election. Pitiful . . .
Isn’t that Greta’s mom?
And then the mother accuses me of being in favor of Leukemia, and intentionally inflicting it on her child.
That’s how it’s done in Australia, and Canada, and most other rational countries. Not in the US. A huge portion of legal immigration here is based on “do you have a family member (aunt/uncle/cousin/in-law) already residing in the US?”. It’s called chain immigration, it’s incredibly stupid, and every time a politician (usually a Republican) proposes getting rid of it in favor of a merit-based system, they’re shouted down as racist.
Yeah, that could happen.
Angela Davis grew up in the Bimingham racist bombings era and area. I’m not saying that justifies her radicalism, but it sure explains it, and would make it nearly impossible to talk her out of it.
Fortunately, she’s the exception coming out of there, even among her own family.
So did Condoleezza Rice, but if you took a poll of the D.C. intellectual elites and the media on which of the two women they respect more, it’s a pretty good bet Davis wins about 500 of the 535 Electoral Votes. And that’s a large part of the problem.
Yeah, amazing how two people can come out of the same circumstances so differently.
Arvo,
I understand. However, Antifa/BLM do see it as a war. The Dems/MSM see it as a business. They get paid by subverting the United States of America and they are really cool with that. Unilateral pacifism is commendable but only to a point. After that self-preservation is your duty.
Regards,
Jim
Bryan,
Certainly, after all of the cr*p we’ve been subjected to these last few months, I can understand. However, never give in!
Regards,
Jim
Yeah, but they shout, “To the barricades!” and when they get there and turn around, they’re alone. They are numerically insignificant. Their voice is artificially amplified.
That’s a fascinating complication, that people have a vested interest in maintaining turmoil.
It seems that we’ve got a couple of different perceptions of the debate. For example, Tucker can clean anybody’s clock on any issue, and I think on any side of any issue, because he’s really good at the Pro Wrestling motif of political entertainment. That’s more kabuki dance than hammering out meaningful and helpful and mutually agreeable solutions and changes.
The latter is what actually changes things, and it’s not winner take all, unconditional surrender competition.
No. What explains Angela Davis is early recruitment into the Communist Party while in programs sponsored by white liberals to bring black kids into private schools. She had a full scholarship to Brandeis and a sanctified status as an official Voice of the Oppressed with shitloads of Soviet backing.
The “founders” of BLM are also overt Marxists who front for the larger left-wing mothership Act Blue. These people are rather removed from authentic struggle. I kinda resent any expectation that I bow before presumed victimhood or that it changes the substance of issues and ideas under discussion especially when that expectation is held by people who have a privileged position and a protected path to get there.
Arvo,
The other side comes right out and tells you that they aren’t interested in “mutually agreeable solutions and changes”, they want to destroy you and your society, take over, and rebuild society to some non-existent fantasy standard. You can’t unilaterally come to a mutual agreement. You do see the problem?
Regards,
Jim
Me, too. It’s very frustrating.
I feel like a podiatrist treating gout that’s blamed on the high tension wires in the patient’s back yard.
How big do you think the other side that wants to destroy actually might be? Let them ululate.
In the meantime, the 80% in the middle will do the actual work.
The problem is that (a) meaningful solutions have to start with facts on the ground as they exist not as some ideologue demands we take them and (b) the “mutual” part requires a disposition towards discourse itself that the left now rejects. If we start by deferring to the spectacularly stupid premise that the death of George Floyd is proof of “systemic” racism and that we must only see the world through that lens, only bad solutions or no solution will accrue.
The current avalanche of good faith and goodwill from largely apolitical white people will not be reciprocated by political goon squads. This deference is a gift of the Sudetenland to ideological aggressors who will press for more.
You are spot-on that the posture (and sincere reality) of openness, goodwill, and sincere desire to understand the perceptions of others is a moral necessity and a pre-req for real progress. It is just that that posture cannot be allowed to produce a de facto surrender to those who actually despise such sentiments.
If it is so simple, why would the old Dem leadership, Pelosi & Schumer, parrot the BLM/Antifa talking points. I don’t think it is wise to invest in this kind of appeasement. Let the Dems take full credit for calling arson & assault “mostly peaceful”.
Regards,
Jim
You and I adamantly agree on this point.
And everything else in that comment, too.
I don’t know why I’m so optimistic.
Theatrics. Playing to the base. Camera time. Virtue signalling.
Arvo,
You bet. Trump punches back and even Russell Brand agrees that he is an effective political force. So effective that Trump will win just because of his punching back according to Russell. I just want to make sure we don’t start making excuses for anarchy, arson, and assault because we are squeamish about Trump’s tweeting. Let the Dems own it.
Regards,
Jim
That’s how Lenin and Mao were smothered in the cradle. Oh. Wait.
Bolshevik means minority. The aristocracy had dismissed the masses’s pain. Same thing in revolutionary France, “Let them eat cake.”
I’m not up on Chinese history, except that it’s bloody.
Arvo,
You do see that you are blaming the victim. Russia was the victim of Bolshevism. Yes, the Czar was dragging his feet giving up power to the Duma. However, Lenin sold the Russian people on “Peace and Bread”. Sounds great. Except far more Russians died in the Civil War than in WWI. They started starving almost immediately and only were saved from total disaster by an American relief effort run by some guy by the name of Herbert Hoover (one of the those mean uncaring Republicans no doubt). Then Stalin arrived on the scene and doubled down on the collectivization. The starvation & purges really got going on an industrial scale. All of this was before Hitler came to power in Germany.
Some peace & bread. They got death and starvation plus seventy years of tyranny. When it comes to genocide you really shouldn’t underestimate the Bolsheviks.
Regards,
Jim
Oh, sorry, sometimes I jump ahead and don’t show my work.
@sisyphus mentioned that Communist revolutions happened, if I understood him correctly, because no one adequately opposed them, especially the 80% in the middle.
I agreed.
And then I pointed out that the reason the small minority of Leninists succeeded was because they were supported by the 80% who felt neglected and dismissed by the Leninists’ opposition. The Leninists made their case, the masses went along. They were snookered.
I also added that the small minority executing the French Revolution were supported by the masses because the French aristocracy appeared dismissive.
If we conservatives are gonna win the hearts and minds of the left side of the 80%, we cannot appear dismissive.