u/QueenViolets_Revenge

Star Trek loves political commentary, and while the internal politics of the Federation have been explored, iirc we're never really told how things work internally and how the government works (granted it's been years since i watched DS9 and Voyager, and like 5 since i fully watched TNG). is it a parliamentary system, or a presidential one? (president as head of stare doesn't automatically equal presidential system). we get constant mentions of representatives in the Federation Council. is it like the US, and every planet is treated like an American state and they each have representatives in the Council? (with over 150 worlds i'm sure this doesn't get confusing) or do only members of certain worlds serve at a certain time and it rotates, similar to the UN Security Council, considering that whenever we see the Council, not every world is represented (although that's probably for budget reasons. don't wanna build a gigantic set containing hundreds of actors just for one scene). afaik this is never explained in the shows or movies, but is it ever explained how it works in Beta canon? (novels, video games, technical manuals, comics, etc). i know that the Federation is a post scarcity democratic socialist utopia, but i'm wondering how its government works, especially because even socialist democracies can vary a ton in terms of how their government works

some pretext: i met this guy (who i'll call Trevor) in 2022 after looking for players in a DnD game. he joined and quickly become one of my favorite players, and became OP from a mix of good choices in his build and the Homebrew module i added for making martial classes stronger. it became a running joke that he could solo bossfights on his own (and he did several times). we became close friends outside of the game as well

after the campaign fizzled through for complicated reasons, he and i lost touch, communicating here and there. that was until i started wanting to play Minecraft again in mid 2025, and one of our mutual friends got us back in touch. Trevor bought Minecraft for me and said it was compensation for putting up with his DnD character. my dad set up a server for us and we played almost every day (late at night very early morning for me. he's Canadian, i'm South African). we set up farms together, were planning on beating the game together, the whole Minecraft friend shebang

the alarm bells started going off in my head once he started talking about the Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory (for those who don't know, Great Replacement Theory is a far right conspiracy theory that believes that there is a plot to replace the "native" population of countries (mainly referring to Europeans). It is based on racism and on the belief that there should be a control on the amount of people that aren't white (and that they would never be part of the nation). he's mixed race, son of an immigrant, so i don't know how he thought getting in with that crowd would end well for him). he also talked about India being better under the British (ignoring the horrible things Britain did to India), made fun of feminism, and made a few jokes about my identity (i figured the last one was just friendly banter. i made fun of him for being Canadian as fun banter. but now i wonder if it was something more). he and i did agree on alot of political stuff, but the things we disagreed on was fundamental. one of the streamers he watched and kept trying to force me to watch got in alot of trouble for promoting the Great Replacement Theory, she was how he got his news so you could see how that might have influenced him

i figured that he was just someone traumatized from a bad childhood (for context, his father had been married 5 times beforehand, moved to Canada from India, married Trevor's mom within months of meeting each other and without meeting her parents, told her that she had to have his kids if they were gonna get married, and she was already pregnant when they married. and while Trevor didn't elaborate too much, he dropped hints here and there about his unstable childhood, and when i told him to write a book, Trevor said that he'd have to sell it as fiction because otherwise nobody would believe him it was such a mess. you have to have an unstable childhood to join the army as soon as you graduate high school). i thought his somewhat prejudiced beliefs towards Indians and immigrants was self loathing stemming from his bad relationship with his asshole of a father. i figured that i could help him off the bad path and talk to him about this. we got along well and i didn't wanna lose my friend, especially the only one that played consistently on my MC world

after all his accounts got hacked, he was able to recover everything except his Microsoft account. no Microsoft account, no Minecraft. while in the interim of trying to recover his account or find a new launcher for him to get into MC from (Microsoft support was of no help, as usual), i brought up the prospect of watching Star Trek with him. it's one of my favorite franchises ever, DS9 is my favorite show ever. and when i brought up watching Star Trek together, Trevor made fun of it, called it stupid, and overall dismissed it as dumb garbage. after bringing up how it adopted from naval tradition, he said that it "was made by a nerd with no military knowledge" (Gene Rodenberry, the creator of Star Trek, served in World War II, and other Star Trek pioneers were veterans, including Scotty's actor James Doohan, who was at D-Day, and set designer Franz Bachelin, who was in the German air force during World War I). after this, i began to reevaluate my friendship with Trevor, and i realized. i'm not a professional. he's on a bad path. he needs help from a professional. he's a dick. he's not a bad person, atleast i don't think he is. but he engages in bad behavior and believes bad things. i didn't know if i could maintain a healthy relationship with this man while keeping my mental health stable. and i didn't want to find out

i cut him off in early 2026, and told him that he was an asshole who needed help off of a bad path before he gets himself hurt, and told him goodbye. i did also go scorched earth on the MC server, removing basically everything he built. bit far, but i didn't wanna remind myself of good memories that were now painful. was this a fair reaction? or did i go too far?

some pretext: i met this guy (who i'll call Trevor) in 2022 after looking for players in a DnD game. he joined and quickly become one of my favorite players, and became OP from a mix of good choices in his build and the Homebrew module i added for making martial classes stronger. it became a running joke that he could solo bossfights on his own (and he did several times). we became close friends outside of the game as well

after the campaign fizzled through for complicated reasons, he and i lost touch, communicating here and there. that was until i started wanting to play Minecraft again in mid 2025, and one of our mutual friends (i'll call him Raymond) got us back in touch. Trevor bought Minecraft for me and said it was compensation for putting up with his DnD character. my dad set up a server for us and we played almost every day (late at night very early morning for me. he's Canadian, i'm South African). we set up farms together, were planning on beating the game together, the whole Minecraft friend shebang

the alarm bells started going off in my head once he started talking about the Great Replacement Conspiracy Theory (for those who don't know, Great Replacement Theory is a far right conspiracy theory that believes that there is a plot to replace the "native" population of countries (mainly refering to Europeans). It is based on racism and on the belief that there should be a control on the amount of people that aren't white (and that they would never be part of the nation). he's mixed race, son of an immigrant, so i don't know how he thought getting in with that crowd would end well for him). he also talked about India being better under the British (ignoring the horrible things Britain did to India), made fun of feminism, and made a few jokes about my identity (i figured the last one was just friendly banter. i made fun of him for being Canadian as fun banter. but now i wonder if it was something more). he and i did agree on alot of political stuff, but the things we disagreed on was fundamental. one of the streamers he watched and kept trying to force me to watch got in alot of trouble for promoting the Great Replacement Theory, she was how he got his news so you could see how that might have influenced him

i figured that he was just someone traumatized from a bad childhood (for context, his father had been married like 5 times beforehand, moved to Canada from India, married Trevor's mom within months of meeting each other and without meeting her parents, told her that she had to have his kids if they were gonna get married, and she was already pregnant when they married. and while Trevor didn't elaborate too much, he dropped hints here and there about his unstable childhood, and when i told him to write a book, Trevor said that he'd have to sell it as fiction because otherwise nobody would believe him it was such a mess. you have to have an unstable childhood to join the army as soon as you graduate high school). i thought his somewhat prejudiced beliefs towards Indians and immigrants was self loathing stemming from his bad relationship with his asshole of a father. i figured that i could help him off the bad path and talk to him about this. we got along well and i didn't wanna lose my friend, especially the only one that played consistently on my MC world

after all his accounts got hacked, he was able to recover everything except his Microsoft account. no Microsoft account, no Minecraft. while in the interim of trying to recover his account or find a new launcher for him to get into MC from (Microsoft support was of no help, as usual), i brought up the prospect of watching Star Trek with him. it's one of my favorite franchises ever, DS9 is my favorite show ever. and when i brought up watching Star Trek together, Trevor made fun of it, called it stupid, and overall dismissed it as dumb garbage. after bringing up how it adopted from naval tradition, he said that it "was made by a nerd with no military knowledge" (Gene Rodenberry, the creator of Star Trek, served in World War II, and other Star Trek pioneers were veterans, including Scotty's actor James Doohan, who was at D-Day, and set designer Franz Bachelin, who was in the German air force during World War I). after this, i began to reevaluate my friendship with Trevor, and i realized. i'm not a professional. he's on a bad path. he needs help from a professional. he's a dick. he's not a bad person, atleast i don't think he is. but he engages in bad behavior and believes bad things. i didn't know if i could maintain a healthy relationship with this man while keeping my mental health stable. and i didn't want to find out

i cut him off in early 2026, and told him that he was an asshole who needed help off of a bad path before he gets himself hurt, and told him goodbye. i did also go scorched earth on the MC server, removing basically everything he built. bit far, but i didn't wanna remind myself of good memories that were now painful. was this a fair reaction? or did i go too far? am i the jerk?

TL;DR, my friend started spouting harmful conspiracy theories, and deeply insulted something very near and dear to me, and i cut him off because i figured he was on a bad path and i didn't think i could help him off of it