One of the hallmarks that I’ve come to expect from conservatives and Republicans is hypocrisy and an inability to use consistent logic. For instance, those who would insist that an unwanted fetus be carried to full-term and birthed have claimed for themselves the title of “pro-life” despite adamantly opposing welfare systems that would often provide that same child, and countless others, with the food, shelter, medicine, and education that it now desperately needs to make its life one of modest quality rather than impoverished suffering. That hardly seems “pro-life”, so much as it is “anti-abortion”, but the term “pro-life” admittedly sounds considerably more righteous and positive, even if it is also equally inaccurate and misleading. Even recently, the self-proclaimed “party of states’ rights”, on the heels of insisting that the legality of transphobic, discriminatory bathroom laws be left up to the states to decide, has issued statements of intimidation heavily implying that liberal states with lucrative (and nationally popular) recreational marijuana laws will soon be facing attempts to force those states to conform to federal laws.

However, one particularly odd, and admittedly niche, instance of right-wing hypocrisy has recently boggled my mind to such a painful degree that I have occasionally wondered in such moments whether I was merely having a stroke. (Have no fear, though; my brain-meats currently work just fine.) The particular phenomenon that I speak of is the occurrence of Republican Star Trek fans who dream of a future just like the one we all see in the Star Trek universe. My having to acknowledge this philosophical paradox as an extant facet of the current reality to which I belong makes me wonder horrifically as to what kind of cognitive dissonance would allow heavily religious, proudly classist, anti-taxation champions of cut-throat capitalism to think for even a nanosecond that their chosen ideology could ever lead directly to Gene Roddenberry’s post-scarcity, secular humanist, socialist utopia. What Olympic-level, subconscious, mental gymnastics are afoot here?

Let’s start with the basics: Star Trek’s Federation is obviously a socialist utopia (especially in the Next Generation era), so how is it even feasible that adamantly “anti-socialist” right-wingers look at such a hypothetical future and think for even an instant that they’re looking at the goal of die-hard capitalism? It’s important to realize here that socialism is a much more generalized and overarching economic concept than communism, which is a specific form of revolutionary socialism, and unlike communism, which directly opposes capitalism, socialism as an economic concept came about as a way to temper the negative side-effects which occur in capitalism’s wake. In the modern era, a healthy and robust combination of both socialism and capitalism seems to currently make for the most stable and fruitful economies, and (believe it or not, conservatives) the best example of that fact is the good ol’ U.S. of A. Fox News can hate on socialism and its “corrupting influence” all they want to, but our public roads, public utilities, public libraries, public schools, police forces, fire-fighters, postal services, and so on are not demonstrations of capitalist ventures, but rather the efforts of basic socialism to ensure that society as a whole benefits from the bounty and innovation that has sprung from capitalism over the years. Now, it’s here in my rhetoric, on the heels of that notion, that someone could perhaps raise the point that our current society has not yet breached the post-scarcity threshold, and is thus still deeply dependent on the engines of capitalism to keep us moving forward. While that may or may not be true, and I won’t waste time denying it because capitalism has indeed been a bountiful source of wondrous innovation for humanity, I’m not here to demonize capitalism as much as to assert that positions of anti-socialism and die-hard “capitalism at all cost” mentalities, especially in an era where the standardized response to the joblessness caused by automation is to scapegoat irrelevant foreigners and stigmatize welfare recipients, probably isn’t going to lead to anything even resembling the future portrayed in Star Trek. Plus, it’s willfully ignorant to the point of delusion to suppose that humanity could build a society based entirely on throttling the machines of capitalism, only to then slide smoothly into the values of Rodenberry’s post-scarcity paradise the morning after someone invents replicators. As innovative as capitalism is, we need to incrementally shift toward socialism as we automate the world, or else we doom the human race to withering away as an impoverished proletariat trapped in a jobless wasteland of plenty.

The world of Star Trek is not a world of the values espoused by Republicans and conservatives, not in the slightest. Jean-Luc Picard makes it quite clear that capitalism became outmoded and completely lacks a place within the Federation when he says, “The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.” This statement seems to cast capitalist motivations in a light that colors them as existential hurdles to the altruism that blossoms from their socialist society. Jean-Luc Picard is also on the record stating, “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” Now, that’s not only a mentality that would adamantly refute the Social Darwinism that seems to guide the core politics of the Republican party, but a mentality that would also insist on the implementation of a social safety net rather than demonizing welfare institutions while labeling their recipients as “lazy”. Personally, I used to consider Captain Picard to be rather conservative for a man of the future, but I think it’s fairly obvious that by our modern standards, Jean-Luc is a bed-wetting liberal.

I would be remiss to portray the Star Trek universe solely as a socialist utopia without also addressing its existence as an icon of Secular Humanist ideals, as well. For those unfamiliar, Secular Humanism is exactly what it sounds like: secular (meaning religion has no place in government affairs) and humanistic (meaning humans and sentient life are more important than ideals and dogma). Some notable Secular Humanists include Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and (you guessed it) Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry.

It’s here that my mind starts to get boggled to the point of nightmarish embolism once again. How can the Religious Right, who ceaselessly insist that our founding fathers were Christians despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, look at Rodenberry’s Federation and see the future that Christian conservatives want to build? I can only imagine that the same rationalizations that serve to obscure Thomas Jefferson’s atheism must work equally well in either temporal direction. It’s utterly absurd to me that religious conservatives who insist on prayer in public schools and attempt to deny marriage rights to homosexuals, who epitomize the indoctrinating, missionary mentality of Christianity, could spend an hour watching a starkly secular society being guided by the Prime Directive of not interfering with developing cultures, and think to themselves, “Yo, that’s exactly how we roll.”

I think that Worf vicariously sums up both Rodenberry’s and Star Trek’s view on religion perfectly when he comments, “Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew them a millennium ago. They were… more trouble than they were worth.” It’s like Nietzsche, but with a forehead ridge.

So, what the fuck, dear reader, are we supposed to conclude about why and how Republicans and conservatives could ever enjoy Star Trek as much as some of them obviously do? Well, I think that in a certain way, Republican Star Trek fans are just doing essentially the same thing that Republicans do when they refer to themselves as the “party of small government”; they’re completely ignoring their own social platforms. But rather than focusing solely on tax cuts and eroding regulation as they usually do, when it comes to Star Trek fandom, conservatives have to be focusing almost entirely on things like starships, teleporters, and not noticing how the grotesque Ferengi are disturbingly indistinguishable from most Republican legislators and conservative businessmen. Beyond that, I suppose I’ve come to see right-wing Star Trek fans as a sort of pinnacle of cognitive dissonance, proudly demonstrating (with a tragic irony utterly lost on them) that the human capacity to rationalize and ignore sadly seems more powerful than any warp drive or photon torpedo ever imagined.