The Paklid Presidency

In a speech on the House floor a couple of weeks ago, Oregon Democratic Rep. David Wu claimed that the White House had been "taken over by Klingons." Wu stated that when it came to Iraq, Bush only listened to Vulcans, which is a term that neo-fascists like Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz use to describe themselves. But Wu went on to say:

"These aren't Vulcans -- there are Klingons in the White House. But unlike the Klingons in Star Trek, these Klingons have never fought a battle of their own. Don't let faux Klingons send real Americans to war! It's wrong."

OK, it was a silly speech, but I agree with Wu that members of the Bush Regime do not resemble Klingons. There is, however, one alien race from Star Trek which closely resembles the Bush Regime and its apologists. These aliens first appeared in the Next Generation episode called "Samaritan Snare." It was, for the most part, a forgettable episode, but part of the show did make it into pop culture -- or perhaps into a subpart of pop culture. That episode, after all, gave us The Paklids, and, like the members of the Bush Regime, these aliens turned out to be militant idiots.

The Paklids first got the Enterprise's attention by faking that their ship was disabled and was in need of repair (kind of like how Bush faked a lot of people into thinking he was a "compassionate conservative)." The Paklids used simple phrases like "Our ship is broken," "We are far from home," "Can you make our ship go?" "He is smart," "Will our ship go now?" and "We look for things -- things to make us go."

I've always thought The Paklids would make great spokespersons for Ex-Lax, but I digress. Anyway, Riker sends LaForge over to help these folks out, but just as Geordi is finishing up his repairs to their ship, the Paklids become violent. They shoot Mr. LaForge with a phaser, and then begin making demands on the Enterprise ("We need your computer things") and start saying stuff like: "You think we are not smart -- we are smart," "Make us strong," and, who could forget the most famous Paklid line: "We like shields."

The Paklids' ship really wasn't broken -- they were just pretending it was disabled so they could trap the Enterprise into helping them (pretty much in the same way BushCo pretended that Saddam was a threat to us so they could get the American people to support an invasion of Iraq).

So you see, the Bush Administration and The Paklids have a lot in common, especially the whole idiocy part. But when everything goes wrong for The Paklids and their plan to take the Enterprise's computer core fails, they have enough courage to admit failure and their leader actually utters the memorable line: "We are not strong."

And that's where The Paklids differ from the Bush Regime.