\n<\/p>\n
I loved the original Star Trek<\/em> because its brief morality plays captured the importance of culture<\/strong>. Every planet the Starship Enterprise visited had a clear body of shared knowledge and set of customs that shaped social relationships as well as interstellar ones. The fundamental principle called the \u201cprime directive\u201d prevented Starfleet from doing anything that would distort the organic evolution of alien cultures, such as giving advanced technology to those not yet capable of inventing such things on their own. The organization of each society and the power of its culture was a key theme of the series. <\/p>\n Certain episodes stick in my mind<\/strong>. In one, two beings are locked in a perpetual battle that seems incomprehensible until the Starfleet crew clocks that the contested issue is pigmentation. Both beings are bifurcated black and white, like the eponymous cookies, but one is black on the left side and the other on the right. I was a young adult when that episode aired as part of season three in 1969, but I had no trouble grasping the allegory. <\/p>\n The episode I\u2019m thinking about right now is one that aired a year earlier<\/strong>. In \u201cA Piece of the Action<\/a>,\u201d the crew visits Sigma Iotia II, a planet where a starship had gone missing 100 years prior. Having been welcomed when they contacted the planet, they transport down, hoping to learn something about the earlier ship\u2019s disappearance. When the Enterprise crew arrives on the planet, they discover a society modeled on Roaring Twenties-style gangland, with striped sharkskin suits, machine guns, and a definite preference for might over right. It turns out the prime directive has already been breached. Left behind by the ship that visited a century earlier is a book called Chicago Mobs of the Twenties<\/em>. The whole society has been shaped by gangland values. Its leaders demand weapons from the Enterprise crew, threatening to kill Captain Kirk and his officers if they aren\u2019t forthcoming. <\/p>\n After trying and failing to negotiate in the usual fashion, the crew members decide to impersonate gangsters themselves. They subdue the planets leaders with their superior technology, then convince them that the Federation is the biggest mob boss of all, pressuring the leaders of igma Iotia II into agreeing to give the Federation a cut of their action. That sets up an ongoing exchange that they hope will influence the planet\u2019s population to adopt ethical ways of living. Case closed.<\/p>\n This Star Trek <\/em>episode popped full-blown onto my mind screen when I read Thomas Friedman\u2019s February 25th piece<\/strong> entitled \u201cThe Disturbing Question at the Heart of the Trump-Zelensky Drama<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how it starts:<\/p>\n \u201cThe drama going on between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine raises one of the most disturbing questions I\u2019ve ever had to ask about my own country: Are we being led by a dupe for Vladimir Putin \u2014 by someone ready to swallow whole the Russian president\u2019s warped view of who started the war in Ukraine and how it must end? Or are we being led by a Mafia godfather, looking to carve up territory with Russia the way the heads of crime families operate? \u2018I\u2019ll take Greenland, and you can take Crimea. I\u2019ll take Panama, and you can have the oil in the Arctic. And we\u2019ll split the rare earths of Ukraine. It\u2019s only fair.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Friedman makes a good case for the Trump administration as a crime syndicate<\/strong>. Here\u2019s how he describes the effort to obtain President Volodymyr Zelensky\u2019s signature on a document granting the U.S. a massive amount of Ukrainian rare earth minerals without spending a dime. He\u2019s quoting a Wall Street Journal<\/em> account of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent\u2019s visit with Zelensky: \u201cIt was a scene right out of \u2018The Godfather\u2019: \u2018Bessent pushed the paper across the table, demanding that Zelensky sign it \u2026. Zelensky took a quick look and said he would discuss it with his team. Bessent then pushed the paper closer to Zelensky. \u2018You really need to sign this,\u2019 the Treasury secretary said. Zelensky said he was told \u2018people back in Washington\u2019 would be very upset if he didn\u2019t. The Ukrainian leader said he took the document but didn\u2019t commit to signing.\u201d<\/p>\n This rhymes so precisely with my own perception<\/strong> that the creators of the U.S. system of checks and balances, our institutions\u2014all the declarations and agreements that have been relied upon to maintain or at least restore some type of democratic accountability, however imperfect\u2014never anticipated being faced with a gangland kingpin Friedman compares unfavorably to Don Corleone of Godfather<\/em> fame. Consequently, we are ill-equipped to control such a mob boss. There is much chatter now about Trump agency heads refusing to heed court orders limiting their power to dismantle the social goods they ostensibly serve to protect. As the courts have no enforcement mechanisms in such cases, if indeed Trump operatives do refuse to heed them, what can be done? I hope there will be answers.<\/p>\n In the meantime, I like the way Friedman\u2019s story ends<\/strong>. He explains in convincing fashion how Trump, secure in his own powers of bullying disguised as negotiation, has completely misread Putin. According to a Russia scholar,\u201dPutin\u2019s long-term goal is to manage the decline of U.S. hegemony so that America is \u2018just one of the peer great powers,\u2019 focused on the Western Hemisphere and withdrawn militarily from Europe and Asia. Putin sees Trump as his blunt instrument \u2018to manage that inevitable decline.\u2019\u201d This certainly matches my own assessment of Trump as a stooge. I\u2019d be glad to see him stumble over his own clown shoes if only many innocent people didn\u2019t fall first. May his gigantic ego and minuscule powers of perception trip him up soon. <\/p>\n Buddy Guy and Mick Jagger, \u201cYou Did the Crime<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n