since i am both a star trek fan (and NOT embarrassed)

and a proponent of peace, i read this with glee!

Aboard the Imperial Star Ship Ameriprise

by William Astore and Tom Engelhardt

TomDispatch

Okay, the new Star Trek film – you know, the prequel with space sex – is premiering in Australia. Go figure. All I know is I'm not beaming there. On the other hand, I've already been in close communication with a Trekkie pal, and she and I have chosen our night here in New York. May 14th. See you then. (I'll be the one wearing the TomDispatch hat.)

In the meantime, retired Lieutenant Colonel William Astore, TomDispatch regular and another Trek fan – okay, it's not exactly War and Peace, but give us a break – was thinking recently about the strange history of Star Trek, the show that took John F. Kennedy's "new frontier" deep into TV space, even as Lyndon Johnson's U.S. was moving ever deeper into its disastrous war in Vietnam. Now here we are again, a new Star Trek forty-three years later, and this time, two "counterinsurgency" wars already growing desperately old, and one, in Afghanistan, heating up to a boil. If only we could stick to the movies. But since we can't, pop that bowl of popcorn, butter and salt it well, and let Astore take you through some wormhole into alternate American universes on that spaceship we're all riding, the USS Ameriprise. Tom

Aboard the Imperial Star Ship Ameriprise

Heading for the Final Frontier
By William Astore

I grew up in the 1970s on reruns of the original Star Trek with Captain James Tiberius Kirk at the helm, backed by that ever logical Vulcan, Mr. Spock, Dr. "Bones" McCoy, and the rest of the intrepid, space-faring crew of the USS Enterprise. During the tumultuous 1960s, that sci-fi series – before being canceled – had pointed to a more promising future in which humanity would be united. Star Trek, after all, offered a vision of a post-racial society in which blacks and Asian-Americans would serve alongside whites as equals, and a post-nationalistic society in which Russian-accented Ensign Chekov could loyally follow a WASPy captain from Iowa...................