Apologies… but I just had to.
Starfleet Academy takes the weakest, most self-centred, self-absorbed and insecure parts of humanity and presents them as ‘you’re perfect just the way you are.’
There are no challenges to face. No growth to aspire towards. No standards to meet. Nothing to reach for beyond self-validation and perpetual affirmation. Status is gifted through the assumption of ‘protected identity,’ unearned and meritless.
The true effect of such an ethos, embedded into Starfleet, would be the swift destruction of the institution. Starfleet would comprise timid, untested, weak individuals incapable of dealing with undiluted threat or adversity. There would be no true explorers and no defenders; no-one willing to risk themselves for the greater good. No self-sacrifice. The Federation would fold at the first challenge.
The message is clear… reject strength, affirm weakness and pretend vulnerability is the ultimate virtue.
Imagine how these writers would handle a real ‘threat’ storyline (excluding the emasculated Borg from season three of ‘Picard’). Imagine the Klingon ‘warrior’ (!) Jayden, bird-watching, violence avoiding, gay child of a polyamorous, two-father/one mother family, emotionally-flicking his skirt hemline, throwing his vaunted vulnerabilities at an enemy relentlessly-intent upon his slaughter and violently-disinclined to consider issues of ’empowerment’ and ‘acceptance.’
No need to imagine… Episode 6 covered this scenario. A male human and male vulcan sacrificed themselves to save their fellows while Jayden cowered and whimpered in a cloud of aspirational weakness and vulnerability; incapacitated through helplessness and a disdain for eating meat.
The message of Star Trek has been subverted such that our wider cultural canon is now a performative charade accompanied by puerile ‘humour.’
As Ruskin said, ‘…sowed in laughter the seeds of death.’ (The Stones of Venice)
Imagine the main cast of this appalling series (and their ideological ilk) actually colonising Mars and expanding human civilisation into the stars.