Riedquat wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 11:44 am
clearspira wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2020 5:51 pm
Here's where the anti-Brexit politics of Patrick Stewart come into play. This is a clear metaphor for the 2016 migrant crisis that is widely regarded to be one of the pivotal moments in the Brexit referendum as immigration was always one of the main driving forces of it.
It also smacks of the same problems of refusing to consider whether or not the other side has a point, but instead nope, they're wrong, immoral and so on. It's too simple, looking at things too much in black and white. Ditto with the androids, when it was clearly demonstrated that they can be a real threat. Blinkered holier-than-thou is another form of prejudice, and he'd have made his points a lot better if he recognised that. People might get on board with you when you recognise some of the negative consequences for your desired course of action exist, they're rather less likely to when you're in denial about them and equate those who are concerned with the bigots. That's being no more open minded than the bigots.
I get what you’re saying, but honestly I never really saw or felt that in Star Trek Picard, sure it’s made very clear that Picard is against not just abandoning the Romulans in their time of need, but also the ban on Androids after the attack on Mars, and because he is the hero of the story his point of view is framed as (for lack of a better term) the morally right one, however as I have said the Federations decision does make sense given the context of their history with the Romulan Star Empire and the Federation and Starfleet policy of none intervention, this was never a case of the Federation being evil, stupid or controlled by a brain slug.
I do get what you are saying however, and Star Trek has had a long history of having complex issues being more like straw man arguments, with are hero’s coming across as how you put it blinkered holier-than-thou, but I do feel that the situation in Star Trek Picard is a lot more complicated and one can see both sides here.
For me I side with Picard, while there is a long and tense history with the Romulan Star Empire, it has been with its military and government, and the situation that they were in was going to effect more than that, as Picard said lives were at stake here, and if there was anything the Federation could do to help the Romulan people, they should have done so, it could well have finally ended the conflicted between the two governments and been a start to a new era of peace between the two.
Same with the Synthetics at the end, the only reason they were a threat to the galaxy was because of people that feared and hated them, who wanted to destroy them, and who were prejudice against the Synthetics and didn’t see them as people, for the Synthetics (specifically Arcana) it was a them or us mentality, and once Picard showed them the same kindness he had shown Data time and time again when his life was on the line, shown them that there were people out there that not only didn’t act that way but would also defend their right to excised, they were not a threat to anyone.
But as I said I do see the other side of the arguments for both, I simply don’t agree with it, sometimes when one has an opinion and then others do not agree with it, it’s easy to paint the opposing argument as them being evil or stupid simply because they do not agree with it, and it’s important to remember not to do that because not only can the opposing argument have a interesting point to make, but they could well be thinking the same way about your own opinions.