Trust a Trekkie not Trump

I’m a Trekkie. 

OK, there, I've said it. I have watched all of Star Trek: Enterprise, all of Voyager, and I just finished watching all of The Next Generation (seven seasons!).

Before jumping into Star Trek: Deep Space 9, I wanted to shift gears for a while. Flipping through Netflix, I came across The Magicians, a series described as part Harry Potter, part Narnia, where the protagonist and his friends discover that “the magical world they read about as children is not only real, but poses dangers to humanity.” 

Sounds great, sign me up.

Except, after about four and a half episodes, I couldn’t watch it anymore. It was just too much like a soap opera. But what did that mean, I wondered. After a little thought, it came to me: there is a distinct lack of trust among and for the characters. They're all behaving as though everyone else is out to get them. That betrayal is just around the corner, any corner, every corner. 

I get why the writers do it, that builds suspense, storylines practically write themselves. It captures the very best (and by "best" I really mean "worst") of reality TV: do unto others first because they're about to do unto you. The other person isn't going to help you, they don't really care about you. Think Survivor, or maybe, The Apprentice.

Contrast this with Star Trek, all of them. Whatever you might think of the genre, all the characters had each others' backs. Even when one or another of them was acting crazy, making improbable, impossible claims, they stopped and listened from a presumption that he or she was not crazy, that he or she was not trying to sabotage the crew/mission/career. They were a team, they had strength and were able to overcome challenge after challenge, often and only because they were able to work together.

Contrast that with the discourse coming from the US President Elect. Is he more Jean Luc Picard or more Donald Trump? Oh wait...never mind.

The sad thing is that I don't think that Star Trek is all that far-fetched (OK, the replicators,  transporters, and holodecks are a bit out there). This is what I understand is taught in the military; trust your squadmate, trust your brothers- and sisters-in-arms. And it's what makes the New England Patriots so successful, year after year: they trust each other. Each person does his job and trusts his teammates to do theirs.

What's possible when we trust each other? Nothing short of excellence. Nothing less than the stars. Think about some of the most uplifting stories; they're all about how trust in your friends wins out. They are not about the virtues of distrusting anyone, only about trusting each other.

With every attack on one group or another, Trump slices off another piece of this marvellous American experiment. 

I want excellence, I want the stars. I want to trust more.