DIS - The Red Angel

[Worffan101]

Your argument--and STD's--is that the Germans, like the Klingons, are an inherently savage and violent breed of mindless vermin who slavishly follow their Dear Leader and are racially incapable of anything else.

My argument is that it's a totalitarian fascist government. Your argument is incredibly racist, saying essentially "All Germans are Nazis" rather than "Germany was taken over by an evil government."

No, that's STD's argument. And the one you are defending.

Therefore, it is morally justified to put a superbomb under their capital and demand that they accept the rule of a US/UFP -sponsored dictator or be subject to summary genocide, and our noble and civilized willingness to give the barbarians a chance to submit to our enlightened hegemony makes us peaceful and just while proving our racial superiority to their barbaric culture and primitive race.

This argument falls down in that it gives a superbomb to a Klingon finger. It is supporting the peace faction in an internal conflict.

OK, so we should support Mobutu to keep the commies in check, and bugger the kleptocracy and the oppression, then?

That's what STD's argument boils down to. "We would be justified in wiping out these culturally inferior vermin, but we're not racist it's just their culture, and also violence is wrong so we'll give them the chance to submit unconditionally to us BEFORE we kill them all, that makes us good."

Aside from thinking all of that is nonsense, I am curious what you feel would be a proper depiction of the war's resolution.

I already explained it. Burnham either reaches an understanding with multiple Klingon leaders and makes a white peace, or the UFP begins to push the Klingons back and the Klingons bow out before they really start to get humiliated, basically taking a useless border system and declaring victory to salvage their honor.

Putting Rapist Klingon Lady in charge under threat of blowing up Qo'noS is like America putting thermonuclear weapons under Kabul and threatening to detonate them unless the Afghan people unanimously and unconditionally accept a US-appointed Cultural Overseer to ensure that their violent society and disgusting race of cave-dwelling fanatic primitives can never again threaten the USA.

1. She's not a rapist. Her relationship with Voq was consensual. He just remembers it wrong.

2. She's a cultural fanatic of the Klingon race. Far more so than the Council.

3. She's not the Federation's puppet. She's actually been its enemy for years.

In that case, the Federation and Burnham are comically stupid as well as evil, in that they have just actively helped Klingon Hitler take power.

It is blatantly racist, paternalistic, tyrannical, imperialistic, and inherently violent.

Your depiction of the Klingons is honestly kind of horrifying. You're determined to portray their race as identical to their leadership. The Klingons are victims of the High Council and your unwillingness to draw a distinction is kind of vile.

...how can you possibly draw this conclusion about MY argument when it is exactly the argument that you are defending and I am criticizing?

This is why I hate STD so much. It's so intellectually and morally LAZY that it becomes a horrifyingly racist pile of drek.

You have yet to state what exactly is the victory condition you would want to be shown.

False. As I already explained.

[CharlesPhipps]

No, that's STD's argument. And the one you are defending.

Except, Ash is a Klingon and they support L'Rell and take a stand against genocide. The show clearly shows the Klingon High Council is the bad guys in this rather than the people as a whole.

OK, so we should support Mobutu to keep the commies in check, and bugger the kleptocracy and the oppression, then?

Yes, that is the big argument against it. That Burnham and company do not make a lasting peace with the Klingons. We know that she fails because of "Errand of Mercy" and the fact that it did not happen until "The Undiscovered Country."

I already explained it. Burnham either reaches an understanding with multiple Klingon leaders and makes a white peace, or the UFP begins to push the Klingons back and the Klingons bow out before they really start to get humiliated, basically taking a useless border system and declaring victory to salvage their honor.

We're bound by continuity here that the Klingons are forced into a Cold War situation until TUC makes the actual peace-peace in the setting. Even then, ending the series with the Klingons defeated militarily is something that I feel would be strongly anti-Trek.

In that case, the Federation and Burnham are comically stupid as well as evil, in that they have just actively helped Klingon Hitler take power.

Nope. She's more like the Ayatollah. It is a very big gamble on Burnham's part to trust a person who was one of T'Kuvma's extremists but she believes in redemption as well as the belief the Klingons can reach a lasting peace with the Federation.

...how can you possibly draw this conclusion about MY argument when it is exactly the argument that you are defending and I am criticizing?

Because the show goes out of its way to humanize regular Klingons? Voq and L'Rell are co-stars. There's no indications of the Klingons being an evil race, only their corrupt government. I'm wondering where you got the idea they were evil savages.

False. As I already explained.

I don't think you can argue that when you make it in the same post.

[Worffan101]

You know what, if you're not going to engage with my arguments, and you're going to support Burnham's position that the Klingons are evil savages who need a firm hand to keep them in line for the UFP's benefit, while accusing me of calling the Klingons evil savages, then there isn't actually any point in continuing to debate you.

Suffice it to say that I view STD as a worthless piece of neocon dogshit that runs on xenophobia, paternalistic bigotry, insincere tokenistic attempts to be pseudo-"woke", and violence fetishism, and none of its blatantly insincere protestations of "no wait violence is actually bad, guys!" hold any water with me.

[Dargaron]

You know what, if you're not going to engage with my arguments, and you're going to support Burnham's position that the Klingons are evil savages who need a firm hand to keep them in line for the UFP's benefit, while accusing me of calling the Klingons evil savages, then there isn't actually any point in continuing to debate you.

You have by and large failed to shore up your own points, or engage with others in a constructive manner, instead resorting to wild "what-about-ism" such as in the following quotes:

In that case, we should have put nukes under Berlin, and Kabul, and Baghdad, and threatened to set them off if Germany and Afghanistan and Pakistan didn't accept our puppet dictators.

OK, so we should support Mobutu to keep the commies in check, and bugger the kleptocracy and the oppression, then?

You treat "racism" as a trump card, yet you'll notice that neither I nor CharlesPhillips attached attributes to Klingons as a species, but to the culture of the Empire (see: my original post where I specifically called out Worf as an exception). STD also does not present Klingons as a species as fundamentally barbaric, or else Mirror!Voq wouldn't exist in his on-screen form. The whole point of the Mirror Universe is that the people there aren't somehow fundamentally different from you or me, and that the Mirror Universe is what happens when God/Buddha/Krishna rolls the dice and they turn out...poorly.

Who are the characters we see on-screen presenting Klingons (as a species) as intrinsically savage and violent creatures? Well, there's T'Kuv'ma (SP?), the villain who dies ignominiously during the prologue. There's Mirror!Georgiou, the woman who, while biologically nearly identical to a decorated Starfleet captain and all around nice person, instead eats people for fun and engages in casual genocide herself. Then there's Michael in Episode 1, who then proceeds to get her ass beat by the karma stick for several episodes. Just because a view is espoused on-screen does not mean the writers endorse it. Wolfenstein:New Order doesn't endorse Nazism just because it features a lot of Nazis running around.

You also fundamentally misrepresent the opposing position. In your list of things that are fundamentally wrong, you list this gem:

...threatening to nuke somebody's capital if they don't march in lockstep with what you want--[is] just plain WRONG

I'm sorry, I don't see how you can equate "stop killing our citizens in unprovoked attacks" with "march in lockstep with what we want."

[Worffan101]

You treat "racism" as a trump card, yet you'll notice that neither I nor CharlesPhillips attached attributes to Klingons as a species, but to the culture of the Empire (see: my original post where I specifically called out Worf as an exception). STD also does not present Klingons as a species as fundamentally barbaric, or else Mirror!Voq wouldn't exist in his on-screen form. The whole point of the Mirror Universe is that the people there aren't somehow fundamentally different from you or me, and that the Mirror Universe is what happens when God/Buddha/Krishna rolls the dice and they turn out...poorly.

That's like saying "well, in the Mirror Universe, Nazi America is evil and pacifist Germany is good". The whole fucking point is it's a reverse.

By painting the Klingons as a monolith and justifying it as "well it's not racism, it's just their barbaric culture", you and STD are legitimizing Burnham's bigoted attitudes and defending a comically evil plot that involves threatening to blow up the Klingon homeworld in order to forge a ridiculously fragile "peace".

This show is not pacifist. This show is not anti-imperialist. This show is a racist, imperialist, violent and violence-fetishizing work wearing a ridiculously thin skin of pseudo-leftism like a macabre suit. It was written by idiots who think that Jack Bauer is cool and only grudgingly offered insincere concessions to an audience that probably doesn't like Jack Bauer that much.

It's also not about the views espoused on-screen, it's the way that the cartoonishly evil actions of the protagonist and the genocidal wishes of Starfleet are not treated as unconscionable monstrosities. STD's Federation does not deserve to exist. Michael Burnham is a monster, and her Starfleet on par with the Schutzstaffel.

[Dargaron]

That's like saying "well, in the Mirror Universe, Nazi America is evil and pacifist Germany is good". The whole fucking point is it's a reverse.

By painting the Klingons as a monolith and justifying it as "well it's not racism, it's just their barbaric culture", you and STD are legitimizing Burnham's bigoted attitudes and defending a comically evil plot that involves threatening to blow up the Klingon homeworld in order to forge a ridiculously fragile "peace".

But that's the whole point. The Klingons of the mirror universe are just as Klingon as the Klingons of the prime universe. And Mirror!Voq demonstrates that, under the right circumstances, Klingons can be a part of bringing disparate species together rather than simply crushing everything non-Klingon under a thousand jackboots. You made specific claims about what the showrunners of Discovery intended their message to be. I presented counter-evidence, despite the fact that you yourself have posted none. It's your turn.

Think about it this way: you are arguing that the showrunners fundamentally agree with T'kuvma about the nature of Klingons as some pure, monolithic force that is somehow intrinsically different from all other races. Does that seem at all likely, given T'kuvma's rather embarrassing failure right out the gate and his near irrelevance past episode 2?

This show is not pacifist. This show is not anti-imperialist. This show is a racist, imperialist, violent and violence-fetishizing work wearing a ridiculously thin skin of pseudo-leftism like a macabre suit. It was written by idiots who think that Jack Bauer is cool and only grudgingly offered insincere concessions to an audience that probably doesn't like Jack Bauer that much.

No one ever claimed the show was pacifist. It's certainly not imperialist: unless you view the invasion of Nazi Germany as French "imperialism." The Klingon Empire caused enormous damage (some attributable to the leadership, some to the common soldier), and some kind of countermeasure needed to be put in place to make sure that didn't happen again. Leaving the same edifice under the same leadership seems like the definition of insanity from where I'm standing.

If anything, it's the essence of Kirk's monologue in A Taste of Armageddon. Yes, humans are savages with a million years of blood on our hands. Yes, humans are capable of violence. But we decided not to kill today.

[Worffan101]

If there was supposed to be some anti-racist lesson in the MU episodes, Burnham quickly forgot it. Her plan to end the war was to put bombs under Space Berlin and then put Space Joachim Peiper in charge of holding the trigger on behalf of Space America. Not only is that paternalistically racist, it's also stupid.

You are never, ever going to convince me otherwise. I watched season 1, I am not going to be convinced by some guy on the Internet that my lying eyes didn't see what I saw.

[CharlesPhipps]

I will say I think DISCO didn't do itself any favors by not having a clear vision of what they wanted the Klingons to be. Just about all of them come off as savage barbarians and Voq/L'Rell could have been much more interesting characters if they'd been more admirable. We've seen decent Klingons like the lawyer in ENTERPRISE. They really amped up the alienness and cruelty of the Klingons and I don't think we had enough of a contrast.

I will say that the Mirror Universe, for all of its faults for "ruining" Lorca, did a much better job at belittling Trump's America. The Empress is a genocidal psychotic racist and cannibal but even THAT is a bridge too far for Lorca's faction. The Empire is crumbling around the seams as well. No one can fix any of it, though, because the problems require them to do more than blame aliens and minorities in their Empire.

If there was supposed to be some anti-racist lesson in the MU episodes, Burnham quickly forgot it.

Well, Burnham forgave Ash because of what his MU counterpart did and used her forgiveness as the basis for deciding that she needed to mutiny in order to stop the destruction of Kronos via atomic bomb. It's basically the exact same ending as DS9 to the Dominion War.

But if you don't like it, that's your business.

Mind you, Burnham believes that the MU is not opposite land and that Mirror Georgiou is a fundamentally good person because Prime Georgiou is.

[Worffan101]

Yes, but Burnham is an idiot with mommy issues. Her judgement is, even in universe, rather impaired.

[Dargaron]

If there was supposed to be some anti-racist lesson in the MU episodes, Burnham quickly forgot it. Her plan to end the war was to put bombs under Space Berlin and then put Space Joachim Peiper in charge of holding the trigger on behalf of Space America. Not only is that paternalistically racist, it's also stupid.

You are never, ever going to convince me otherwise. I watched season 1, I am not going to be convinced by some guy on the Internet that my lying eyes didn't see what I saw.

But that's the thing, innit? This is a public forum. Convincing you would be a nice bonus. At least getting you to brush up on your argumentation and presentation of evidence would be agreeable, since I'd prefer if each viewpoint was represented as sincerely and completely as possible, so that the intrinsic merits of each position could shine through. But the real prize is convincing the audience.