That’s one way to look at it. Another way is that once assimilated, every one was equal, cared for, and didn’t even have to work unless needed. I suppose a unique identity is nice, but you can’t eat a unique identity.
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As a retired member of the military I would tell you that at some level assimilation into that particular brother/sisterhood is necessary and not a bad thing at all. Similarly many people assimilate into certain corporate cultures with great positive impacts.
Assimilation is not necessarily evil or wrong.
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If you can’t think of why it can’t be offensive beyond a reference to Star Trek then there’s really nothing i can say to you.
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Anyone unable to understand the difference between a Star Trek reference and genocide is deserving of the sort of mockery best suited for animated GIFs.
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Lots of things are not necessarily evil or wrong, only sometimes. And, yes, assimilation into a group of friends, into a family, into a workplace, is often a necessary and frequently a great thing.
But: the gratingly delivered demand that one Must Assimilate, completely and irrevocably, is a horror story. That’s why Star Trek used it as a horror story! All the context that maybe we’re talking about a science fiction trope that isn’t real, or maybe we’re talking about assimilation in the real world but we mean voluntary and limited assimilation with significant rewards both emotional and material - all that’s missing in the eight characters of a license plate, and it can’t be restored by a frame around the plate.
Meanwhile a lot of people in the area are up in arms because their culture was imperiled and their kin literally murdered as part of an imperative to assimilate. They are right to object when their government prints up an “Assimilate!” sign for public display. That’s not the sort of idea their government is supposed to support and transmit - and this guy is perfectly capable of doing it without the government.
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Yeah, really not changing my assessment here.
FFS, it’s a Star Trek reference to genocide.
Also: take a look at the comment just above yours.
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I never said I couldn’t.
And you did not answer my question. Is it your contention that if anything can be interpreted within any context as offensive, regardless of any other context being inoffensive, that the item in question be deemed offensive on that interpretation alone?
But since you ignore my question and inferred something I never alluded to whatsoever. I guess I have nothing to say to you either.
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And in Canada, he’d have to do it in both English and French.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyO1ILQAGsU
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I thought this entire thread was 100% predictable, you proved me wrong.
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I look forward to reading your dissertations on the cultural insensitivity of the Bajoran/Cardassian storylines and how Voyager’s holographic Doctor is an allegory for socialized healthcare.
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My favorite license plate is the one I’d see on a white van in the employee lot at the branch Post Office near my old house in Virginia: DSGRNTL.
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You do know the basis for a lot of the storylines in “Star Trek”, don’t you? To explore contemporary issues in a setting that was in the future, so as not to get in too much trouble with the networks. And to entertain folks, of course.
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Wow, you don’t say!
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Actually, I did.
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After STNG, I thought that V’ger? V’jer? was found and refitted by the Borg.
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ApocryphaEdit
The William Shatner novel The Return, in which Kirk and Picard join forces to lead an assault on the Borg homeworld and end the recent Borg/Romulan alliance once and for all presents the theory that a Borg transwarp conduit consumed the probe rather than a black hole, and that the planet seen by Spock was in fact, the Borg homeworld. The suggestion continues that the Borg assimilated the probe, yet the assimilation went “afoul” and changed Voyager 6 into a more sentient being.
Star Trek: Legacy presented the theory that the 20th century Borg civilization was a peaceful race. When V’ger encountered them, they studied its programming, repaired the probe, and sent it on its task. When V’ger returned to the Sol system it could not find its creator, but “a biological infestation.” The probe returned to the Borg homeworld and joined with them, and its programming propagated throughout the Collective. Something of a civil war broke out. Massive amounts of knowledge, including the location of Earth, were lost in the resulting conflict, and the Borg of the 24th century were born.
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I wish it were that simple.
Huh. Over here its just “super accurate Nazi cosplayers”
Anyway the whole borg thing was from TNG so its not like it was real Star Trek…
The Atlantic is often interesting but here I think they are being a bit too nit picky.
If he learned something from the experience then great!
