There will be a lot of this. Same thing happened with Hillary. I’m not American, I don’t need to discriminate here, I’m writing off all of the US.
But if you’re there… yeah, that anger seems justified. When the shit that’s about to happen happens don’t let them hide behind the blame game.
I am genuinely considering moving away from English language social media altogether. I find my native language media… kind of exhausting, honestly, but it’s still better than what the last Trump term triggered, so… maybe? It has the side advantage of countering some of the whole cultural imperialism, because hey, I’ll suffer it from US coastal elites, but I desperately need an alternative if it’s going to be coming form Elon Musk and Donald Trump, so…
I mean… yeah, the episode isn’t as focused on procedural detail, and I do live for legal process minutia, but I can fill in the blanks just fine and suspend disbelief.
I mean, the question being raised is whether Data has been operating as a person willingly joined Starfleet or as salvaged equipment. If Data had been roaming around on his own and then applied to join Starfleet I’d be more nitpicky, but he was found and turned on by Starfleet and he seems to have been in the system since, so I can see the question of how to categorize him coming up retroactively. Especially in retrospect, since we eventually get undeniable confirmation that AGI is very much possible within their normal gear.
I mean, for the record, by the time Voyager comes around we know that they have protocols to use holographic AIs to substitute in for key personnel, so if you can have a “EMH” slot in for an officer you can have a piece of salvaged machinery operate with a rank and then reassign it to a different role… unless that entity has personhood. It IS a sci-fi as hell concept, but a valid one in-universe.
Me, I would have very much enjoyed Noonyien Soong arguing whether he still owns Data and learn what is legal salvage in Starfleet territory but for the sake of 90s network TV I can see “Is this android truly a life form” being the approach to a Trek episode. And thematically… well, I can’t get through the Goldberg and Stewart scene about slavery without tearing up. It isn’t just how good they both are, it’s the “oh, crap, they’re saying the thing” element to it, too.
Of course that means Starfleet straight up condoned slavery later, as per Star Trek Picard season 1. I would gladly remove all of Picard from lore at this point, but nope, officially Starfleet had legal proceedings to determine that Soong androids are people and to remove their autonomy is akin to slavery and then went ahead and did it anyway.
Picard sucks and is the worst Star Trek thing ever, is what I’m trying to say. Yes, way worse than anything in Discovery. Including season three.
And DS9 is the conservative one with all the religion and the baseball and the war crimes and stuff.
TNG was run by a Frenchman who thought allowing bronze age species to believe in God was a barbaric act and went to bat as a human rights lawyer for an android who in turn let his first child pick their gender at will. All that while his polyamorous first officer was busy arguing against conversion therapy when pushed upon his trans nonbinary partner.
Yeah, no, we’re on the same page. Whether you pin it on the OP or Piker. There are a bunch of presumably leftist pundits that have been asking to see the left’s management all through this process (and I mean since 2016) and will continue to act offended that anybody would suggest there is a responsibility in not being persuaded when the alternative is a fascist anarchocapitalist cabal.
As last time, the response to any mention of this will be “it’s their fault for not convincing me”, which has never been a legitimate argument but will be outright insulting if (when) things start to go poorly.
A better case is that the entire country shifted right, especially fed by a mass of new protofascist youth, but you don’t get extra credit for only being part of the problem and not the whole problem.
In any case, like I said earlier, I have no obligation to split hairs. The US has failed as a country and as a people. They can apportion blame however they see fit. For the rest of us it is now a matter of how to build an international community of democracies in the upcoming climate. We all have to write off the US and find a new way forward without them.