Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

Dr. ER asked me to post this. Said she was afraid that nobody'd see it over at her own place, since it's been so long since she posted.

--ER

Yesterday, a day after President Bush's State of the Union Address, I found myself pretty much couch-bound with hip issues. On the Spike Channel on TV, each day there is a fabulous five hours of programming borne out of the imagination and prescient allegorical admonitions envisioned by Gene Roddenberry and carried on by Rick Berman and colleagues after Roddenberry's death. I am referring, of course, to Star Trek.

Two episodes of "Deep Space Nice" played yesterday that had my jaw dropping to the floor because of their analogies to our current world situation. These are episodes I'd seen before, but never in the Post 9/11 and Bush Administration contexts, the administration's context, especially, fresh in my mind.

The episodes, called "Homefront" and "Paradise Lost" are morality plays for today and were designed to play back to back as part of a continuing story.

In "Homefront" a hawkish group of Federation leaders respond to a national crisis and blame the crisis on the "enemy" -- in this case, the "Dominion" (you could substitute "Al Qaida" for "Dominion" throughout." Everyone who is anyone in Starfleet is brought back to defend the home soil. All is not what it seems, and in "Paradise Lost," the lies and deceptions of the hawkish Federation leaders is revealed and the title of the episode takes on meaning, as Captain Sisko and Odo and a few others work to restore civil liberties on earth, against the "enemy" that was greatly exaggerated in the first place.

Somehow, you must find and watch these episodes, even if you think that everything GWB is doing and has done is right -- perhaps through the lens of Star Trek: DS9, you'll see how analogous the situations are and see today's "war"situation through clearer eyes.

-- Dr. ER