Sam Stroud
Opinion Editor
Anyone who knows me in any slight capacity knows that Star Trek is my favorite show. I talk about it a fair bit with my friends and even those who I am not friends. I am unashamed of my nerdiness.
One of the best aspects of the show is the various villains Starfleet has to combat in order to keep the Federation sovereign and unified. In particular, there is an alien race known as the Borg Collective.
This species is by far the most terrifying. The collective is a species of cybernetic lifeforms who reproduce by assimilating other life forms and transforming them into fellow Borgs. Essentially, they are technology vampires.
But what is more frightening about these creatures is the collective aspect. There is no individuality among the collective, each Borg is simply a drone that acts in unison with every other drone. When talking, the drones refer to themselves always in plural form. They have no identity besides a number – no personality, gender, or background – they are simply a Borg. There ship is a simple cube, in which they have no single leader, and act as a group constantly.
Anyone who becomes assimilated and converted into a drone loses all their individuality, their identities are re-created and they are essentially reborn as a new creature.
The Borg see the Federation as a body not unified due to how individualistic their society is, and intend to bring the chaos they perceive under their own control.
The Borg are a constant threat because they are bent on assimilating all other technologies, cultures, and species, and unifying them all under the thrall of the collective. They cannot be ignored, and they are always ready to destroy and consume other ways of life, culture, and species.
The Federation and Borg Collective cannot exist in the same space because their end goals are not inclusive to each other. In order for the Federation to survive, they must destroy the Borg. The only option for unity is one sided, in which the Borg unify the galaxy under their own rule.
Why have I spent more than 300 words discussing the Borg from Star Trek? Other than to plug my favorite TV show, I think it is an apt analogy for the situation our country faces today.
The left and the right are growing more and more polarized. Part of the reason this is happening is because of the massive political swing to the left the Democrat Party is taking.
We have heard for months now about how the country needs to unify, and that Joe Biden has called every American to end the divisiveness and usher in an era of internal cohesion and peace.
The problem is, just as the Borg and Federation can never unify because their goals are mutually exclusive, so too, are the left and right’s. Each side envisions a different country and neither includes the other side in their own idea of what to do with the United States.
There are some ironic parallels between the far left and the Borg Collective. The unification they want can only be born from cultural subjugation and assimilation.
Rhetoric such as “re-education” and similar calls to change the way Americans think about social and political issues are regularly used by prominent Democrat politicians. Chuck Schumer, Democrat Senate Majority Leader, has promised to transform America.
Exactly what the Senator means by such a promise is unclear, but it is not hard to guess what transforming America may mean.
In the eyes of the far left, America must be assimilated. It is an institutionally flawed country that must be redesigned in order to ensure equity – the idea that everyone’s outcomes should be equal.
The problem is, in a capitalist society dictated by personal freedoms and rights, this goal is impossible. There are simply too many people, making too many choices that ensure everyone does not come out on top. There are stratified layers of success in America, there is no disputing that fact.
In order for equity to be achievable, choices must be restricted for some, and artificially boosted for others. Because every person cannot individually be accounted for, group identities must be established in order for the left to classify the status of a person. These classifications break along several lines, which include race and gender.
The groups are formed from different social theories, which include intersectionality and Critical Race Theory. White men are grouped at the top, as they are seen to have the most privilege and power and thus are the least favorable class.
Minority groups are more sympathetic according to these theories, they have little to know institutional power, and are thus nearly always the victims of the white men and the power they supposedly wield.
In nearly all cases, the theory posits, if you are white, you are privileged, if you are not, you are being abused or oppressed in some form. An individual’s successes, failures, flaws, and virtues are irrelevant. All that matters is the racial class you fall under – that is the true barometer for success.
Gender is another method in which group identities are identified. On the one hand, intersectionality contends that gender is a construct, a fluid concept which is only bound by the artificial constraints of society. Male, female, others, etc., they are all at the end of the day the same. Biological differences can be modified to reflect who people really think they are, and at the end of the day, our bodies are all the same, and consequently, we are all the same.
It is these ideas which are constantly eroding individualism within the United States. People are no longer more than the sum of their parts according to these theories of identity. They are simply extensions of whatever collective they fall under.
In terms of our biological differences, there are none. According to these theories, we are exactly the same, just with different features. Mainstream media outlets such as CNN parrot this line of thought when the organization describes women as “individuals with a cervix.”
When I compare these ideologies to the Borg Collective, this is what I mean. These identity theories that left wing politicians and activists subscribe to call for the complete destruction of individual uniqueness and a uniform subservience to collective action.
This by itself does not necessarily stop unification from happening. The country could be unified still with people who disagree over these theories of identity save for the biggest problem with this entire group of ideas.
There is an evangelical aspect to these theories. Disagreement cannot be allowed. As long as people do not buy into their group status, they work to undermine it. By demonstrating that they are more than the sum of their parts, people who do not simply chalk their identity down to their technical components and refuse to accept that everyone is biologically the same undermine the notion that we are all just members of competing collectives by making themselves successful through their own actions.
Particularly if you are white, you must be assimilated. You must be taught about your privilege. You must learn about the ways in which you commit microaggressions against your neighbors and friends. You must be told what things you can and cannot do or say around others.
The end result is simple to see, these identities wish to make everything about us a construct and eliminate our individual traits that make every single American unique. A successful white man had only become successful because of his privilege, nothing about the individual played a part in that success.
Once this can be achieved, once everyone accepts that they are simply a unit of a collective, equity may be possible, as groups will be treated differently by the state in order to ensure everyone ends up with exactly as much as the person next to them.
The unity that people who subscribe to these theories desire is not a unified group of individuals, it is a unified group of collectives, in which all will be subservient to the state, as it is the best engine of equity.
Unity is not possible, because there are some who resist this way of thought, and there are those who still value individualism over group identities. In order to unify in the manner the left desires, those who disagree with them would be forced to renounce their individualistic beliefs, and admit their “guilt” as agents of oppression and their collective.
Those of us who disagree have heard the saying hundreds of times. Silence is violence. If you do not agree with the left’s perspective, you are part of the problem.
Unification is impossible when one side of the aisle wishes to culturally and intellectually assimilate the other.
