More geek wars! I love it!

The "lessons" I took from this movie were a) George Lucas is not as deep a thinker as he thinks he is, b) George Lucas is not as good a screenwriter as he thinks he is, c) George Lucas doesn't understand people, and d) George Lucas is a brilliant visual storyteller and master cinema technician. Unfortunately, I was in my 30s when the movie came out - too old to appreciate it for what it was, a sci-fi romp for 12-year-olds. If Lucas had continued in the same vein, the last two movies might have been a bit better. He tried to get deep. He doesn't do deep.

No, there is a LARGE number of haters who don't like this film.

In the 60s, the efficient Nazi state wasn't a myth - at least not for the general public. It was still seen in terms of the progress made in the 1930s and the image of efficiency the Nazis tried to project. And for the men who fought against the Waffen SS, Hitler's very own personal army, there was nothing sloppy or half-assed about the Nazi's way of doing things. In the 60s, most people thought we had defeated an apparently unbeatable military machine. There was the thought that if Hitler hadn't been "crazy," the war would have turned out much differently. It took people years to understand the systemic weaknesses that contributed to the Nazi's failure.

He was a liberal, but not all his writers were. Well, they may have been, but as you pointed out, this was the mid 60s when many writers still saw the value in classical liberalism of the American variety. I don't think the intense cynicism and self-criticism we saw in the late 60s/early 70s had set in yet. If Roddenberry really thought capitalism and democracy would be replaced by something better, it wasn't a message the American TV audience wanted to hear.

Another thing about the writers: They probably understood that life in the Roddenberrily-correct future would have been BORING. Utopia, by definition, is conflict-free. Everyone's happy and well-fed. There's nothing to struggle for, nothing to fight for, nothing to commit murder for. What kind of drama can a writer find in a world where everything's OK? So the original Star Trek writers usually ignored Roddenberry's "basic philosophy behind the show" and continued relying for conflict on good old, godawful human nature as everyone understood it ca. 1967.

Stop confounding liberalism with leftism. They're not the same thing.

To continue...

If a country turns its possessions and its freedom over to ANY group of "those who know what's best for the nation," that group will eventually become an oligarchy. The oligarchy will become indispensable for the good of the Volk, the success of the Revolution, or whatever. It will use its power to protect, preserve, and enrich itself rather than to benefit everyone equally. Happens every time. It's human nature. Unfortunately, modern leftists think they've overcome human nature - that they're capable of handling vast power while remaining the "good guys." Events continue to prove them wrong.

Sadly, we always confuse leftism/liberalism with socialism and vice versa. Socialism is a system, a structure, a method, a tool. It is really politically neutral. Leftists and rightists in history have both employed socialism to accomplish their widely differing goals. The one thing they have in common is the desire for control - the power to harness a nation's wealth, industry, and populace to the State so that the State can "make the world a better place."

Slippery here has the right idea. The Nazis were socialists but they were not leftists. But he doesn't go far enough. He assumes that socialism is ok as long as the right people - leftists, in his opinion - are in charge. Leftists are fundamentally different from Nazis because their goals and intentions are "good." This totally misses the point of this article and the ST episode.

In other words, Wu was pointing out that it wasn't just some creature eating people, it was a full-scale business enterprise? Possibly.

Maybe not so much self-loathing as survival. Go secular, blend in, assimilate. When you assimilate in Hollywood, maybe this is what you get.

He didn't say "the predatory finance capitalism of wall street and the financial sector and the abuses of certain multinationals." He said "capitalism."

Pay attention when you read stuff.