Again: The Genius of Star Trek

If you don’t believe in the concept of time travel, you might want to start watching old reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I’ve already posted on other episodes that clearly showed someone from the nineties was eerily scripting science fiction that could be based on life in America as we now live.  Big Daddy was amazed at the prescient irony he was watching and called me in to listen to this conversation between Hugh, a former member of the Borg collective who shun all individualism, and some of the officers of the star ship Enterprise (including the Klingon security officer Worf):

Hugh:  You probably can’t imagine what it is like to be so lost and frightened that you will listen to any voice that promises change.

Worf: Even if that voice insists on controlling you?

Hugh further expounds upon how the mastermind of the Borg creation “had no idea how to keep his promises.  He began talking about the need for us to make sacrifices.”

Eerie.  Creepy.  Sounds like now.

Unfortunately, I’m tired as death due to my work schedule and God knows what else.  I haven’t even had time to go over the new “health care” manifesto, so I can’t pick it apart yet like I know I should.  I did hear somewhere that any family making over something like $88,000 per year would be paying a 10% tax to help pay for this.  If this is true, you might as well say goodbye to the middle class of America.  I can only hope this isn’t true.

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Same Goal, Different Path

Last night, after watching the phenomenal results of the Senate race in Massachusetts, I expressed my glimmer of hope in humanity with a quick comment on my Facebook profile about how the people there have spoken–loud and clear.  This was a big deal.  This state is the birthplace of the liberal Kennedy dynasty; voting Democrat is a way of life.  The people who voted yesterday put the well-being of their country ahead of their personal ideology.

In the privacy of the voting booth, the voice of the majority has been expressed.  But why is this growing majority not heard as often in the media, in the blogosphere, or even on the streets?  I can tell you.  You’re misunderstood.  You sound heartless and politically incorrect.  You feel like the “Ugly American.”

Some of the nicest people I know think this administration’s plans to completely turn this country upside down in the guise of “helping people” is the only way to go.  Some of them are victims of the bad economy and are searching for the short-term help that the government is promising.  Others are just caring people who have been trusting enough to believe that the government really just wants to help people with no ulterior motives in mind.  Making a deal with the devil never seems so bad in the beginning.

I can’t even begin to express all of my misgivings about the government’s race to take control of America’s health care (and banking, and media, and auto industry…).  Many younger people don’t fully understand that Socialism/Communism doesn’t work for anybody but the ones in charge because the education system started omitting the stories about the Soviet gulags, the killing fields of Cambodia and the violent suppression of Chinese dissidents from the curriculum in favor of stories about how bad it is to be successful, entrepreneurial or white.

All I can say is that what I want is what most rational Americans want.  I want our country to prosper and continue to be a place where persecuted foreigners can seek safe haven by legally entering our country and embracing and contributing to our culture.  I want our own citizens to be able to live the American dream and enjoy the fruits of their labor without worrying that a serious illness will put them out on the streets.  I just think there are better, cheaper, and less intrusive ways to get there.

Liberals Need To Watch More Star Trek

Big Daddy’s latest favorite show to use up all the recording space on our DVR is Star Trek–in its many spin-off forms.  I’m pretty sure we watched them all the first time around, but when you get to be our age, it doesn’t really matter.  We seem to forget a lot, so it’s “all new to you!”

Most of these shows were written in less scary and tumultuous times, yet they are ominously relevant today.  Perhaps these sci-fi writers were time-travelers in their day!

Last week, Big Daddy and I exchanged glances during an episode about the Borg, the soul-sucking, mind-usurping collective that does not allow for individual thought or freedom.  I shivered a little.  It reminded us of the direction the one-world advocates are trying to move us toward.  It is not a happy ending in Trekkie-land, and it won’t be a happy ending here on present-day Earth.

Even more prescient was the episode of Star Trek: Voyager that we watched this morning.  The name of the episode was “Critical Care,” and it exemplified all that worries me about universal health care.  It showed a “civilization” that allowed its health care to be run by a heartless bureaucrat.  Finite supplies of medical care and medications were strictly and ruthlessly rationed by a bigwig far removed from the suffering masses.  Of course, “important” people, or friends of “bigwigs” were given top priority in drug distribution because they were on a higher tier level, or in other words, were more “important” to society.  A drug which could save the lives of many citizens on the lowest tier were instead being used up by those lucky friends of bureaucrats on the “blue tier” to slow the aging process, which was another useful benefit to this particular drug.

Just science fiction, you say?

Late last year, when universal health-care advocates were trying to convince the doubting masses about the “fairness” and “efficiency” of this type of medical care system, a woman from Canada explained why she loved that system.  She had an operation under their government plan, didn’t have to pay a thing, and the health care was great!  She didn’t even have to endure a long waiting period because…get this…she knew somebody.  She actually admitted that she got preferential treatment because…she knew somebody.  And we all secretly know, deep down, that this is the way it’s going to be.

Between you and me, I’d rather take my chances and let money be the deciding factor in the quality and timing of my health care.  If I have to go back to school to better my chances of finding a job that provides decent health insurance, or if I have to get a second job to pay for health care on my own, I’d rather do that than depend on the soulless bureaucrats we have running this country.

Putting my nose to the grindstone is far more preferable to kissing the ass of some politician.