Popular Culture, Conspiracy Theory, and the Star Trek Text

The forward progress of society is not automatic and should not be taken for granted. The assassination President John F. Kennedy in 1963 ended his effort to deploy American prestige, power to forward progressive change worldwide. Today, there are political forces seeking to stop progressive social, political, economic change. Whatever their reasons, such forces are conspiring to impose authoritarianism to suppress the public’s desire for just, democratic governance, government. The brutality, violence, viciousness, racism (dystopia) of authoritarianism is becoming more and more the hallmark of world politics. Perhaps the most glaring aspect of this dystopia is the fact that the American state has been almost continuously at war for the past roughly 30 years – including a sinister, dastardly drone assassination program. One means to obscure the ongoing conspiracy to ultimately impose outright dictatorship on the American people and the rest of the world is to smear, malign critics of this conspiracy as guilt of conspiracy theory – advocating, embracing baseless fantasies. Worse yet, proponents of conspiracy theory (by implication) are deemed as psychologically suspect for arguing that political elites are engaged in a process to eliminate all meaningful vestiges of democracy.