The only problem is, we aren’t in The Federation. We are living in The Dominion.
I am a big fan of Star Trek, having watched all the broadcast TV shows. The popular viewpoint is that Gene Rodenberry’s vision of the future was positive, with humanity finally outgrowing its destructive tendencies and living in harmony.
The show Deep Space Nine, however, depicted a darker view of the galaxy. This view is relevant to the current insanity in the United States. From seasons 4 to 7, the show centered on a war between the Dominion and the Federation, which came through the wormhole from the Gamma Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant, which was home to the Romulan Empire, the Cardassian Union, and the Klingon Empire.
The Dominion was a major imperialist state in the Gamma Quadrant. Technologically advanced and millennia old, the Dominion was an interstellar oligarchy founded under the absolute rule of a group of Changelings known as the Founders, whose will was carried out by the Vorta and the Jem’Hadar. The Dominion was dedicated to imposing the Founders’ vision of “order” upon the universe, i.e., bringing all other civilizations under its control.
In the show, The Dominion had four levels of people: The first and the highest were the Changelings, referred to as The Founders. Under them were the Vorta. The Vorta were the administrators of the Dominion Empire. Genetically engineered to be obedient to the Founders, the Vorta merely acted as its administrators, commanders, scientists, and diplomats. Owing to their position in the Dominion hierarchy, the Vorta also served as the commanders of the Jem’Hadar. The Jem Hadar are the foot soldiers of the Dominion. Like the Vorta, the Jem’Hadar were genetically engineered to revere the Founders as gods and to be unquestioningly loyal to them. Part of Jem Hadar’s genetic makeup was the need to be dependent on a drug ketracel white for survival. All Jem’Hadar were addicted to “the white,” which was regularly distributed to them by Vorta overseers. This was the Founders’ means of ensuring the Jem’Hadar’s loyalty to them. Jem Hadar was only male ( this will be very relevant to the following discussion).
Finally, there were the solids, the conquered people under the Dominion’s rule. The Founders were largely apathetic toward the affairs of the solids and were content to leave the administration of the Dominion to the Vorta. If conquered populations revolted or resisted the rule of their Dominion overlords, they were brutally crushed.
Here’s a final explanation: This Dominion’s societal arrangement was known as “the order of things,” and deviation from it was punishable by death. The Founders held ultimate authority, and their decisions could not be questioned under any circumstances.
While set in the future, science fiction often reflects current events. The writers of Deep Space Nine could not have foreseen the utter hellscape the United States would descend into some 30 years after the show aired. Nonetheless, if one goes back and watches the show now, the parallels between that universe and the world of Trumplandia ( the hellish incarnation of the US right now) are undeniable.
How exactly? You may be asking. Think about it for a minute. Just as in the Dominion, we have several classes of people, all with their assigned roles in “the order of things.” In Trumplandia, The Founders are the billionaires, the oligarchs who are determined to swindle the last remnants of democracy away from us. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and many others — obscenely wealthy and morally bankrupt — want to destroy equality and democracy in the United States. Thiel has said as much publically. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Inequalities of power, in turn, generate strongmen who destroy both democracy and freedom. We have seen this play out this past week as Musk, quite illegally, mind you, seized control of OPM and treasury computer systems. For them, there is no such thing as America, America, democracy, or citizenship, and they act accordingly. Now that the oligarchs and their clients are inside the federal government, they are moving, illegally and unconstitutionally, to take over its institutions. They are just as authoritarian as The Founders were in Star Trek. They live apart from everyone else — and, like the Changelings, want to be treated as gods. And just as in Star Trek, the oligarchs can instantly change their form. Example #1 of this is the collapse of Mark Zuckerberg and the changes he has made at Facebook. Remember, a 2021 biography of Thiel, called The Contrarian, alleged that as a student at Stanford, he defended apartheid as “economically sound.”
Who, then, are the Vorta? These are zealots like Russ Vought, Stephen Miller, Steve Bessent, Kash Patel, and the other incompetent sycophants that Trump has appointed to high government positions. Not oligarchs themselves ( but still incredibly rich), they are committed to blind obedience to the wishes of the Oligarchs. Russ Vought is a disgusting Christian Nationalist who wants to remake the United States into what he says it is: a Christian nation rather than a nation with lots of Christians. They are indeed evil people and are totally committed to hurting their fellow citizens. But they are not at the level of the oligarchs. They are servants, often seen as expendable by the Founders. And like in the Star Trek universe, there are always ways to clone these evil men and women, even if they themselves meet their downfall. Just as with the Vorta, the Rus Vought’s of the world can do incredible damage. Remember at the end of the Dominion War in Season 7? 800 million Caradassians were killed.
The Jem Hadar are these guys:
The deranged red hat-wearing morons of the MAGA movement are the Jem Hadar. Their ketracel white is the steady flow of lies and misinformation from scum like Joe Rogan, Fox News, OANN, and so many others. One cannot reason with them at all. And as in a season 6 episode, even when they suspect Vorta are wrong, they will still sacrifice themselves to “own the libs.” (Victory is life!). Even if it kills them — they serve the founders.
There are numerous examples of this; I don’t have to cite all of them here. Just look at what’s happening in Texas with its terrible laws. These Jem Hadar are like walking surveillance cameras waiting to shoot Republicans at the slightest sign of disobedience. Congressmen and others are terrified of the worthless souls in red hats, so much so they act against decency or national interest. Just look at how they voted for a massive incompetent like Pete Hegseth.
The more I watch this train wreck of a government unfold, the more I feel that the analogy to the Dominion makes perfect sense. Life under the Dominion’s rule was “nasty, brutal, and short.” This is increasingly becoming true here in Trumplandia — especially if maniacs like RFK Junior get to be in charge of our healthcare system.
Timothy Snyder summed up the dilemma we are in:
In the logic of destruction, there is no need to rebuild afterwards. In this chaos, the oligarchs will tell us that there is no choice but to have a strong man in charge. It can be a befuddled Trump signing ever larger pieces of paper for the cameras, or a conniving Vance who, unlike Trump, has always known the plot. Or someone else.
After we are all poor and isolated, the logic goes, we will be consoled by the thought that there is at least a human being to whom we can appeal. We will settle for a kind of anthropological minimum, wishful contact with the strong man. As in Russia, pathetic video selfies sent to the Leader will be the extent of politics.
For the men currently pillaging the federal government, the data from those video selfies is more important than the people who will make them. The new world they imagine is not just anti-American but anti-human. The people are just data, means to the end of accumulating wealth.
They see themselves as the servants of the freedom of the chosen few, but in fact they are possessed, like millennia of tyrants before them, of fantastic dreams: they will live forever, they will go to Mars. None of that will happen; they will die here on Earth, with the rest of us, their only legacy, if we let it happen, one of ruins. They are god-level brainrotted.
The attempt by the oligarchs to destroy our government is illegal, unconstitutional, and more than a little mad.
Just like The Founders. They destroyed the Gamma Quadrant and almost beat the Federation. Sadly, in our timeline, no one is coming to our rescue.