The Federation and The Empire
There are at least two ways of looking at any structure of power. This is why two philosophers can argue all night about whether a glass is half full or half empty, and why two nerds at a late-night dorm room bong session in 1978 could have watched Star Trek reruns at 2 a.m. on Channel 11 and then gone straight to the theater the next day to see Star Wars and come away describing the same goddamn archetype as if it were two opposite political systems. The Federation? A gleaming utopia of exploration, diversity, and diplomacy, where Captain Kirk (or later Picard) quotes the Prime Directive and then promptly violates it in the name of a higher moral order. The Empire? A cold bureaucracy of oppression, its fleets blotting out the stars, Darth Vader wheezing like a bad acid trip gone mechanized. But here’s the joke: these are two ways of looking at the same thing. Or rather, they’re two reality tunnels looking at the same archetype of centralized power. One man’s benevolent “Fede...
