211022 -or- *Ron Paul vs. Rudy Giulani (2007), an earlier draft
In the Deep Trek (“DS9”) mythos, Cardassia fights for territory and resources, the Federation fights to conserve the status quo, and the Maquis fight for freedom.
This edited communique between representatives of the Maquis, Mr Eddington, and the Federation, Captain Sisko, comes to us through mysterious media, but starting with Deep Trek® season 4 episode 22: “For the Cause”
The only reason I’ve contacted you now is to ask you to leave us alone and to remind you that if you keep sending replicators to Cardassia, you’re going to have a lot more to worry about than hijackings.
Why is the Federation so obsessed with the Maquis?
We never harmed you. And yet we’re constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands. And our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we’ve left the Federation, and that’s the one thing you can’t accept. Nobody leaves Paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation, hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You’re only sending them replicators because one day they can take their rightful place on the Federation Council. You know, in some ways, you’re even worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation.
You’re more insidious.
You assimilate people, and they don’t even know it.
Let’s parse this parable. If the Maquis are the Maquis, does that make the Federation the Nazis? Not quite, that would be way overstating it, but the Maquis are still too romantic not to reuse. The Federation is the UN and they are as popular in the Badlands as the Blue Helmets are in Syria, and that’s close enough. Speaking of the UN as the Federation (or as “The Feds” as was confessed in “A Piece of the Action”), “Between Planets,” a novel by Robert Heinlein, is ripe for adaptation into the Trek-verse, as it paints “The Federation” (a thinly disguised UN) in colors as similarly harsh as Eddington has since perceived.
{ * wherein Rudy demonstrates his lack of qualification to be President by confessing his ignorance of the long established foreign policy principle of “blowback” and defends his “authority” on the basis of personal injury (in a move that neo-klingons call “bitch-slapping Ron Paul.”) The Borg killed Sisko’s wife, and Al Qaeda killed thousands of New Yorkers, which, instead of compromising their objectivity, transubstantiates their anguish into expertise. }