StarDestroyer.Net BBS

This was actually written as part of a larger fluff piece for a Spacebattles SD. But Phong talked me into posting it elsewhere. So here it is.



The Federation spent the 24th Century trying to build the "Enlightened Society"; a multi-racial society in which every member was dedicated to the betterment of sentient life. This was an implicit attack on capitalism and the free market, which was and always has been directed by the force of personal desire for wealth. The Federation government used, and sometimes abused, it's power in an effort to dismantle the private sector and institute a benevolent command economy who's sole purpose would be to provide for each member of Federation society. This central impulse created the system that would eventually tear the Federation apart.
The "Enlightened Society" was first proposed by a Vulcan philosopher-scientist, Sirok, in an academic essay published in 2289. He used Vulcan society as a model. The Vulcans had a command economy, one of the few in the Federation, because of their devotion to Surakism. Surak's teachings opposed the idea of private property and the pursuit of personal power and luxury, as the way to cultural and social enlightenment was selfless service to society and the suppression of personal desires and emotions in favor of strict logical thinking, more properly translated as "reality-truth". Trying to improve one's power and wealth was dismissed as wasteful, an unending course that could only squander one's potential. Sirok proposed that other races, over time, would see the wisdom of Surak's way and recognize that their personal desires and greed were keeping them and their societies stagnant and unable to improve themselves. Various Leftist parties on Earth and other worlds took up the cause and publicized it widely.
The pressing questions about re-distribution was aided by the first forays into replicator technology. In 2295 scientists from Cambridge successfully tested the first replicator by creating a marble bust of Sir Issac Newton from a raw hunk of marble. Two years later, a team from Berkeley University near San Francisco successfully replicated a frankfurter and fed it to the pet Labrador of one of the researchers, with no ill effects to the canine. Though it was soon obvious that replicated food lacked the taste of "real" food, replicators proved a remarkable source of plentiful food. All that was needed was raw foodstuffs; replicators, hooked into transporter-related systems, could handle transportation and cooking needs at once by providing a fresh plate of cooked, ready food at the touch of a button. The power demands were a concern, but the development of ultra-light fusion reactors in 2304 Local provided a solution.
All that remained was politics. In 2302 the 35th Federation Council was elected. Sirok was Vulcan's choice. He drafted the Basic Necessities Act (BNA), which would allow the Federation's government to buy foodstuffs, medicine, and construction material at low, regulated prices to provide food, medical aid, and housing to all citizens. The act failed due to the estimated cost. Sirok and his small cadre of supporters counter-attacked publicly: they pointed out that Starfleet had not yet cut down it's forces to the level agreed to in the Khitomer Accords, costing money that could go to the BNA among other things. It was a selective release of information, as the complete demilitarization of the Federation-Klingon border was not meant to be completed until 2310, but it worked and the public began insisting on abiding by the Accords.
The 2306 elections were positive for Sirok's "New Way". They campaigned strongly enough to win several planetary governments, particularly regional governments with large numbers of urban dwellers, and gained enough seats in the Federation Council to come to the forefront. But they still failed to put through the BNA. Starfleet was proving a focal point for resistance, as many of it's political supporters, usually disparate and opposed to one another, banded together to oppose the BNA as requiring the scrapping of Starfleet. The New Way countered that Starfleet was no longer needed in such strength. There were no more threats to the Federation.
Starfleet found something to latch onto. In 2308 a shockwave was detected in Romulan space. Intelligent assets and Romulan press releases quickly determined the cause; the Romulans had successfully detonated a trilithium bomb. Trilithium, a waste product from the use of dilithium crystals in matter/antimatter reactors, was notoriously unstable and a few scientists had speculated that sufficient quantities of it, properly refined, could cause stars to explode. Starfleet brought the matter before the Council and insisted on maintaining defense spending. Only with their current force level could they protect the Federation from this "barbarous new Romulan weapon", which could "annihilate entire star systems". Reports indicating otherwise were quashed. Starfleet's leading admirals needed the fear the bomb engendered to keep the public from leaning toward Sirok.
Their exaggerations were probably greater than they imagined. Though Romulan sources are scarce even today, it is widely accepted that the trilithium bomb was a bust. The Romulans found that it was impossible, with their current means, to produce sufficient amounts of refined trilithium to cause even the smallest stars to explode. But they found the illusion Starfleet created valuable later on.
The Tomed Incident came later that year. Whether it was a purposeful attempt to embarrass Starfleet or not is still up to debate. Reacting to a slight provocation - an apparent violation of the Neutral Zone by a Federation ship - the Romulans launched a full-scale attack on a Federation starbase at Tomed. The starbase and it's defenders were destroyed, killing tens of thousands of Federation nationals. Starfleet responded viciously and a counter-attack led by Admiral Hikaru Sulu threw the Romulans back over the Neutral Zone. Both sides lost dozens of ships. Warnings were issued as both sides prepared for war.

Sirok grabbed his opportunity. He called on the Federation Council to negotiate with the Romulan government and prevent a war from shattering the peace so recently won. Some of Starfleet's nominal allies abandoned them and supported Sirok's peace movement. It seemed to them, and many in the Federation, that all of Starfleet's promises were hollow; it alone could not prevent conflict by it's strength, and the circulating press story that Starfleet provoked the Romulans into the attack made it seem that Starfleet was even willing to go to war to justify it's power, a war it obviously was ill-prepared to fight if the Romulans had defeated them so easily.
The Romulans knew better. They took more losses at Tomed than the Federation knew and Sulu's counter-attack had cost them dearly. They were not ready for war with the Federation, especially not with the Klingons ready to defend their "allies" for a chance at valuable Romulan territory. Furthermore, there were great security concerns. Too many Romulans, especially in the colonies, were opposed to the government's initiatives. The Romulans accepted Sirok's offer to negotiate, desiring a more permanent treaty that could give them time to upgrade their military and deal with their internal problems.
The two sides agreed to meet at Algeron. The Romulans' terms were strong. Fifty percent of both sides' Neutral Zone military installations would be dismantled (exempting listening posts) and the amount of forces they could deploy near the Neutral Zone reduced, the Romulans by a quarter and the Federation by seventy-five percent. In exchange, they would agree to a promise of non-aggression and compensation to the victims of Tomed. The Federation countered with an additional request to ban trilithium weapons. The Romulans were apparently stunned that the Federation would be concerned about a useless weapon, and failed to immediately address the issue. When the Federation's request became a virtual demand, the Romulans took their opportunity and agreed to a term to ban trilithium weapons so long as the Federation banned use of cloaking devices by Starfleet. The Federation agreed to all the terms.
The Romulan government was stunned. Their opening terms had been strong because they expected the Federation government to demand a more equitable reduction of forces. They had underestimated the pull Sirok was gaining in the Federation Government. Tomed had proven him right, it seemed: keeping Starfleet powerful would only guarantee more conflict and bloodshed, whereas peaceful negotiation and agreement would bring lasting peace. Khitomer had already provided the basis for the theory and it would be another half century before the Federation would begin to learn otherwise. The success of the Second Treaty of Algeron emboldened the Romulan government, and it would spend the next fifty years in diplomatic isolation, purging their government, industries, and education system of "undesirable" influences (driving many "reactionaries" into the colonies) in preparation for dealing, finally, with the Federation and Klingon Empire.
Sirok was now the major force in Federation government. He led the Federation Council in the removal of President Sorxana Metheloi, blaming her for failing to keep Starfleet under control. Sirok and the New Way allied with several leftist and non-Human parties at this point and mustered the strength to place Neo-Socialist leader Hadrian Benton into the Presidency. The Neo-Socialists were primarily strong in Human communities, only just beginning to expand their strength into non-Human Federation races; the alliance between the New Way and the Neo-Socialists would open them up to this extra step, as many of the Alpha Quadrant races far from the Klingon and Romulan borders mistrusted the other Human parties as too warlike.

With this new alliance, the New Way Coalition controlled the Federation government. It passed the BNA, with modifications insisted on by President Benton; the BNA now allowed the Federation government to nationalize companies that went bankrupt or refused to cooperate with the new system. Several groups protested that this was unconstitutional. A third of the Council walked out when the BNA was passed and several Council members resigned and urged their planetary governments to break with the Federation if the BNA was enforced. The Federation's private sector, however, soon proved structurally weak to the New Way. There were very few agricultural and construction companies of sufficient resources to oppose the Government because most were small, usually servicing only one continent or planetary region; many gave in rather than trying to oppose the BNA, and the handful that didn't were attacked on two fronts, the beginning of nationalization proceedings coinciding with a vicious press campaign against the company. The citizenry seemed to support the New Way: boycotts against resisting companies devastated most and brought them to heel within a year.
Starfleet was next. The Tomed Incident had provided the excuse Sirok and Benton needed. Two-thirds of Starfleet Command and a third of the Admiralty were sacked by the President and forced to resign. The purge prompted a wave of resignations from lower officers and NCOs in protest; Admirals Sulu and Chekov, the last prominent members of James Kirk's legendary crew still in Starfleet, were amongst them. It was an attempt to bluff Benton into ending his attempted purge but it failed, a failure that would have severe consequences for Starfleet in the coming years. The protests from the public were stronger than they had been from passage of the BNA, but ultimately the New Way prevailed, their supporters in the press playing down the anti-New Way protests and focusing on the more extreme, militant groups to discredit the others. President Benton created a new regulatory body, the Commission on Starfleet Operations, and filled it with New Way men. They in turn appointed a new Starfleet Command composed of "politically suitable" officers (including Starfleet Command's first two Vulcan admirals, mostly notable in that both had only just reached admiralty ranks and were assigned to minor dead-end bureaucracies due to the politics of the pre-purge Starfleet).

2310 was to be the year that the New Way solidified it's power. But the "Old Way" leaders had one last card to play. The New Way's central premise required that the Khitomer Accords be followed and that was about to be challenged. As the election year began, the Klingon Empire announced it could not meet the deadline for the 70% border demilitarization mark that was supposed to be achieved by this time. The Federation press fed upon itself in the frenzy to deal with the announcement due to the clear desire among New Way supporters to sweep it under the rug. The purged Starfleet elements forced the issue in public. The electorate reacted in a mixed fashion. It still wanted the BNA, the guaranteed homes, food, and medical treatment. But old fears of Klingon aggression popped up and anti-New Way demonstrations rocked the worlds along the Klingon Neutral Zone.
Benton proved more maneuverable than Sirok. Sirok insisted on negotiations, but Benton took a hard stance, which had the effect of destroying some of his support with the New Way. His own party was unwilling to abandon their growing popularity in the core worlds and the worlds far from the Klingon and Romulan frontiers. They threw him out. Sirok became President briefly, but his attempts at negotiation failed.
The Klingon Empire was simply unable, structurally, to disarm as much as Gorkon and Azetbur had intended - it's military-industrial complex had too much power. Azetbur pushed the issue in the Klingon High Council, fearing that the Federation might withdraw from the Khitomer Accords. There was resistance from several noble Klingon houses that now had to choose between their traditional support to the government or their own wealth, tied to the military industries. The military began openly defying her authority as well. Azetbur ignored the warnings of her ministers and continued trying to force through a demilitarization in line with the Khitomer Accords. As the Federation election drew closer, Azetbur's pushing hardened. A week before the election she finally managed a Council meeting that could order an immediate withdrawal from the bases, in effect de-militarizing them before the deadline in lieu of immediate dismantling. As she went into the Council Chamber, Azetbur was suddenly attacked by the bodyguards of one of her ministers and fatally stabbed. She died within minutes.
Azetbur's assassination a mere week before the election terrified the Federation populace. Certainly the same Klingon cabal that had killed her father on the eve of the Khitomer Accords was coming to power (in truth her killing was the result of a deranged ultratraditionalist Klingon who opposed female rule). They wanted to be protected. The New Way received it's first setback. Sirok and the four other Vulcan seats were safe due to the New Way's unwavering support from Vulcan, but outside of those seats, the New Way lost a third of it's number in the Council. Surprisingly, a number were lost to the Neo-Socialists, who proved capable - on an individual basis and despite their leadership's support for continued negotiation - of supporting defensive measures more than the pacifist New Way.

Several "Old Way" parties and candidates formed a Coalition and had a near majority to take over the government. They would have to induct the New Way or the Neo-Socialists. Sirok refused to budge from his pacifist position. The Neo-Socialists again proved their malleability when it came to assuming more power. They agreed to join the coalition so long as the BNA was not repealed. The Old Way had no choice and accepted the Neo-Socialists into their midst. With their support, Hikaru Sulu was elected President of the Federation Council.

Sulu would turn out to be the one last gasp of the pre-New Way Federation. Though the ruling coalition could not repeal the BNA, Sulu limited it's use. He stopped all proceeding nationalization cases and raised the price controls so that private sector was no longer in the red from government purchases. The BNA still required him to give the basic living standards (Basic Living Necessities, aka BLN) to all Federation citizens, a task which proved impossible. Sulu's new Cabinent found that even under Benton, funding was short. Only the core sectors could be provided with the BLN. The Neo-Socialists also proved to be mercenary. They would be unable to muster a vote to remove Sulu on their own, but they could still ally with the remaining members of the New Way and their old allies when it came to pushing their social agendas. They pushed through a Council resolution levying a 10% due from all member worlds, to be paid in either funds or BLN goods. Their projections, later proved overly optimistic, showed that this would allow 80% of the Federation to have the BLN within fifteen years.
The charter colonies refused to accept the resolution. Unrepresented in the Federation Council, the charter colonies were the political result of a desire to not give the Federation's founding races an unfair advantage in legislature (which could lead to newer races refusin to join to avoid being marginalized). However, in exchange for not being in the Council, the charter colonies were allowed to rule themselves under any government they wished (so long as it honored the Federation's Constitution) and were exempt from most taxes and dues that could be levied upon represented worlds. They were even permitted to field their own militaries, if they could afford them, so long as they subordinated them to Starfleet in times of crisis. By this point, the population explosion on Earth that started after the Earth-Romulan Wars had expanded to space, and many of these charter colonies were human, a number of them being from particular human cultures as well (there were also similar colonies of Tellarites, Andorians, Betazoids, and other key races).
The Neo-Socialists, again opposing their own coalition partners (And holding hostage their desires to end Starfleet's decline), forced through another Resolution ordering the President to enforce their intial resolution (at the same time they passed a law ensuring they could order dues from any future charter colonies). Sulu refused, citing the Constitution and the Federation's prior agreements with the colonies.
It was Sirok who broke the impasse. In private meetings with Sulu in June 2311, he told the President that if he didn't get the colonies to give the dues, the New Way would put forward a resolution in the Council that would slash Starfleet to such minimal levels that it would be impossible to protect the charter colonies. With the support of the Neo-Socialists and other pacifist groups, it would certainly pass with just enough votes to overcome Sulu's veto (literally one vote, in fact). This amounted to extortion. The colonies mostly lacked the defenses to protect themselves, especially near the frontier. They would have to build up their own defenses and it could cost far more than the dues the Federation was asking for.

Sulu acqueised and extracted a promise from Sirok that Starfleet would be allowed to pursue the New Fleet program that had been initially proposed under Metheloi (this would lead to the modernization of the Excelsior fleet and the building of the newly-planned Ambassador-class battle cruisers and New Orleans-class frigates, among other things). Sirok agreed, perhaps reluctantly. Sulu, not wanting to deal with a court battle with the colonial leaders, forwarded the agreement to the charter colonies, urging them to accept; he could not prevent Sirok and the New Way from getting what they wanted. All but a few charter colonies agreed. In groups over the next few weeks, they began cooperating with the dues and money and materials came into Federation coffers, allowing the BNA to be implemented in the inner tenth of the Federation's territory by 2314.
Sulu's victory was the modernization and upgrading of Starfleet. He then used this as a bargaining chip with the Klingons. The Klingons had become technologically stagnant at this point. Their economy was still unstable as it tried to deal with the cleanup of Quo'noS while overcoming the entrenched military-industrialists, and they could ill afford a new arms race with the Federation so far in the lead. Thus they would not be able to match Starfleet's new forces and lacked the offensive strength to threaten a successful pre-emptive strike before they came online. The new Klingon government under Chancellor Korlaq gave in and demilitarization was put back on track and would remain so for nearly twenty years.
Sulu also attempted to undo Benton's purge. He invited a number of commanders back, but many were rejected by the Commission of Starfleet Operations, which was still controlled by Benton's men. There were also public protests, as many Federation citizens linked those leaders with Tomed (which was coming to be seen as a disaster, not as a failed Romulan attack). Sulu tried to replace the Starfleet Commissioners but was compelled by legislative pressure to back down.
The 2314 elections led to the New Way regaining a few seats, almost all at the expense of the "Old Way", while the Neo-Socialists remained relatively stable in their numbers. Sirok wanted to remove Sulu and cease the New Fleet, but the Neo-Socialists (now under Michelle Moore) again sided with the other parties. They, perhaps more than Sirok, appreciated the need for a powerful Starfleet to keep the Klingons honest.
The two parties still agreed on the key issues, and were making advancements. As the Klingons met their demilitarization marks, the fears that had led to their setbacks in 2310 subsided. Furthermore, by 2318 the BLN was available on 2 out of every 10 Federation worlds. Both parties surged in public membership and support as they made the claim that they were eliminating poverty "for all time", which seemed to be true to the core worlds that voted for most of the Council (in contrast, by then the charter colonies were beginning to feel the ill effects of 10% of their GDPs going to the Federation central government for the BLN and poverty was increasing). The 39th Council was elected that same year, and the "Old Way" parties lost even more ground; the New Way Coalition and Neo-Socialists, together, gained enough seats to control sixty percent of the Council vote. The Neo-Socialists, who had more seats than the New Way, kept Sulu in power but forced him to remove half his Cabinent, including the Secretaries of Transportation, Finance, and Industry, plus the Chairman of the Security Council.
By 2320, the BNA began showing a dark side. Productivity in the core worlds was falling. Unemployment was rising steadily and the pressure on the BLN was increasing. Economists predicted that within ten years, the twenty inner-most systems of the Federation would be de facto command economies as local businesses closed down from a lack of both business and labor. Surveys indicated many people on Earth and nearby planets (save Vulcan) no longer believed it necessary for them to work for a living. The BLN provided everything they needed to survive. They could work little oddjobs once and a while for cash, but so long as they had homes, food, and medical care they were willing to just enjoy life.

It was about to get wrose. In August 2320, the first planet-wide replicator system came online on Mars. Every being living on Mars now had access to public replicators to make whatever they wanted (save weapons, which were not programmed into the system). Earth, Alpha Centauri, and Andor had similar systems online in October, and thirty inner systems were completely online by New Year's. The consumer economy began to collapse. Why would anyone buy a manufactured item when they could easily replicate it for free? Even worse, the public replicator system was considered part of the BLN - the materials and energy needed to power this new, unexpected use of the system came from the BLN. Sulu decided to reform the system and limit it to food. This was not technically a violation of the BNA, so the Council did not stop him. Immediately a wave of public protest erupted; the planets with the replicators wanted the free goods the system offered. They also controlled a disproportionate number of Council seats, and their representatives heeded their protest. A new act, the Replicator Usage Act, was brought forward to the Council to make the use of public replicators for replicating "non-violent items" legal. Sulu vigorously opposed it. He went public; the Federation couldn't afford the RUA being implemented, since it would spike replicator use and require even more raw materials and energy (thus requiring more fusion reactors and even more fuel and staff for those). In 2321 another sixty inner systems gained replicators. Because of the way the Federation Council was set up, these ninety systems controlled a near-majority of the Federation seats at the time. Their neighbors began pursuing them too.

By 2322, eighty percent of the systems with Council seats had planet-wide replicators. Polls and public demonstrations demanded passage of the RUA. The New Way grabbed hold of the issue; Starfleet had to be reduced to provide the funding. The Neo-Socialists vacilitated while Sulu fought back, publicly reminding the Federation's electorate that the money for the BLN came from the charter colonies, who expected defense. Starfleet couldn't be reduced without compromising this.
The New Way won. When the 40th Federation Council convened, seventy-five percent of it's seats were held by the Neo-Socialists and the New Way. Sulu resigned the day after the elections and Sirok was immediately voted to replace him. The New Way and Neo-Socialists split the Cabinent, with the Neo-Socialists taking the key Secretariats of Finance, Industry, and Agriculture, as well as six of the eleven seats in the Federation Security Council. An increase in the levies on the colonies was passed on July 10th 2323, increasing it to 20% by the 2324 fiscal year and 25% by the 2330 fiscal year.
The charter colonies did the only thing left to them: they threatened to secede. Near the Triangle and the Romulan and Klingon frontiers, leaders from three economically powerful charter colony governments in the region - Pacifica, Algrossa, and Nippon - met to debate secession and the formation of a confederated government for self-defense. New Anglia, New Anatolia, the De Soto worlds, and the Hortak Constituency (Andorian) send officials to deliver ultimatums to the Federation government. Several more began openly deliberating secession.
The Neo-Socialists called upon the use of military force to bring the colonies into line. Starfleet could be used to blockade the worlds and force them to accept the will of the Federation government. Sirok wavered while the Neo-Socialists whipped up public support. The colonials were portrayed as greedy capitalists, more intent on their own wealth than on helping to raise all of the peoples of the Federation into prosperity. They had to be stopped, forced to bow to the democratic demands of the Federation's citizenry. Protests and demonstrations broke out against the rebelling colonies. The Colonial Affairs office was purged of suspected sympathizers, writers were fired from news services, and in a few cases confirmed citizens of the charter colonies were outright attacked. It became so bad that when the Federation Supreme Court gave a preliminary ruling in favor of the charter colonies, protestors picketed the Court and one of the Justices was even assaulted while trying to walk his dog.

Sirok was becoming an old man now, well into his 170s. He had worked for over three decades to see his vision of a Federation guided by Surak's teachings realized, and now the neo-Socialists had perverted it with their militarism. He addressed the Council on July 20th and asked them to compromise with the charter colonies. The Neo-Socialists, led by Moore, attacked him viciously. He clearly had no stomach to see his great society come to fruition. The Federation needed a leader who could bring the rebelling colonies to heel and put the Enlightened Society back on track. Half the New Way defected to the Neo-Socialists in the vote of no confidence. Sirok was removed and Moore became President. She immediately began purging the Federation government of Sirok's allies.
Starfleet again became a problem. Sulu had silently appointed officers he trusted into high positions during his Presidency. They refused to attack their own people. Moore sacked Sulu's men and brought back some of Benton's. Starfleet's rank and file nearly revolted now. And some of the public support for force was declining as it became clear that it might result in civil war. After only two months in the Presidency, the Neo-Socialists and New Way removed Moore from office and put in the Council Representative for Tellar, Jovark tha'Twissi.

Jovark played Sirok's old card. He informed the rebelling colonies that he'd have to cut Starfleet if they didn't agree to a dues increase. He also pointedly reminded them, in a public fashion, that they'd probably have to spend just as much of their GDPs to establish their own defenses, which in many case would be reliant on resources within "loyal" Federation systems. Alone, they'd be easy pickings for the Tholians, Klingons, or newly-discovered Cardassians. The colony's public reacted as Jovark hoped and their governments, mostly by slim majorities, backed down and accepted the dues. To facilitate the compromise, Jovark pushed through the Council a modification to the dues increase and removed the increase to 25% in 2330. He perhaps felt that the colony's economies might begin to recover as the BLN was extended to them (a miscalculation that the Secretariat of Finance made, as even the 25% number would not have allowed the BLN to be established in the charter colonies, not to mention the RUA). Nevertheless, the crisis passed without tearing the Federation apart.

This was probably a good thing, as in 2325 new studies showed that the pollution of Quo'noS by the destruction of Praxis three decades before was beginning to decline due to several methods of treating it, mostly developed in the Federation. Though an entire generation of Klingon Homeworld dwellers were poisoned now, the ongoing evacuation could be ended by 2330. In May 2325 the New Anglia-based Center for Federation Defence issued a public report estimating that by 2338 the Klingon military would be able to resume rearmament, with a "year of maximum danger" in 2345; that is, the year that the Klingon Empire could reasonably attack the Federation and expect to win.
Jovark had already decided that Sulu's policy of supporting Starfleet's continued operation was a good policy and he continued it, including the ordering of the second updated flight of New Orleans-class frigates and the expansion of the Ambassador fleet. Jovark may have been influenced by Sulu's Security Advisor, Marilyn Cobalt, who avoided the forced purges in Sulu's final term and afterward. After Jovark's death in 2340, Cobalt wrote in her memoirs that Jovark had possessed very little personal understanding of military affairs and matters of Federation security, meaning he was likely to follow the best-sounding suggestion to come across, which was usually Cobalt due to Jovark's personal respect for Sulu (and by extension, Sulu's choices for advisors). Cobalt's advice centered on maintaining Starfleet as a credible military threat to the Federation's many aggressive neighbors. Though negotiations with the Gorn were finally paying off, there were still other threats to be concerned with, particularly the Tholians and the Klingons.
Jovark's party men, Security Council Chairwoman Marie Jospin and Senior Commissioner of Starfleet Operations Ikvora Dosh'kal, often complained about being ignored. They took their complaints to the Neo-Socialist leadership. When the Council officialy protested Cobalt's "unchecked influence on Starfleet policy" in the first open meeting of 2326, Jovark sent Cobalt to address them and defend herself, and Cobalt pointed out to the Council that the strength of Starfleet was the only thing keeping the Klingons in adherence with the Khitomer Accords now that Quo'noS was recovering. The Federation "had twenty years of guaranteed peace left". From 2345 and beyond, nothing could guarantee peace with the Klingon Empire any longer. Despite Jospin and Dosh'kal's protests, the Council accepted her argument.

Jovark also continued Sulu's policy of not levying dues on new charter colonies so that colonization efforts would not be hindered for such little gain. This had an even greater effect that Jovark probably intended. As the dues increase caused economic stagnation in the older established charter colonies, citizenry took off for new ones where taxes would be lower. The resulting increase in manpower - and thus in produced goods, materials, and resources - created an entire generation of economic prosperity in the colony worlds that probably enriched the Federation far more than it anticipated just by tax dues and tariffs from the resulting trade. Had wiser governments less fixed to their course been in power, they may have very well never placed dues upon these worlds. Of course, this did not happen and the boom ended after a generation; many of the colonies established in the 2310s would be levied with dues by the 40s, and by 2360 not a single charter colony in the Federation would be exempt from the dues. The economic health of the frontier charter colonies lapsed at precisely the same time that they were coming under direct external threat, which the Federation's central government often failed to appreciate.

Jovark's Presidency lasted twelve years before he resigned on his own, in which he proved to be a stable head of state, if not overly bright or willing to make sacrifices to reduce the decline of the Federation's private sector. His Vulcan successor, Turok of T'Pala, was the leader of the New Way and Sirok's successor. Turok decided he had no use for Starfleet. The budget crisis wasn't ending and strain on the system was growing. His new Cabinent mostly supported scalebacks in Starfleet, but it was pointed out that the Neo-Socialists still accepted Cobalt's views. Furthermore, scaling back Starfleet would breach the agreement with the charter colonies. They would certainly secede and just deal with the pain of establishing their own defenses.
Turok's new Senior Starfleet Commissioner, T'Par, found a solution. She advocated a silent, secret cutback in the form of "improving efficiency". The public would be told that waste in Starfleet spending would be cut, the fat removed and leaving only muscle. In truth, the new construction programs would be reduced in cost by cutting corners. Fewer and smaller weapons, as well as smaller and less sophisticated shield generators, would be mounted upon ships. The new weapons projects (which would, when re-instated later, eventually produce pulse phaser cannons and the quantum torpedo) would be cut in funding. The government could easily hide the exact funding going to each branch, and by classifying it those in the know could not go public. Turok agreed with T'Par's ideas. Starfleet's budget was thus "scaled back" by no less than 40 percent, as a result of supposed "improved financial efficiency". It would not be until the 2350s that Starfleet would begin to recover; only in 2367, after Wolf 359, would Starfleet's budget return to pre-Turok levels.
Turok's secret budget slashing of Starfleet was not enough to save the faltering system. In the 2330s, only a handful of private companies remained in the initial BNA-related industries, and mostly because they catered to wealthy tastes that could not be included under the BNA. The Federation had found it necessary, under Jovark, to nationalize 95 percent of the core sectors' private agricultural and construction companies, 70 percent of the companies that produced basic consumer goods (chairs, tables, cutlery, appliances, and other items to furnish the public housing provided by the BLN system), and 64 percent of the pharmaceutical companies. The industries that hadn't been touched were also declining from a lack of trained workers. Everyone was falling back on the BLN and the replicator systems, with fewer core sector citizens going to universities and colleges or entering the workforce. By 2340 PellCorp found it necessary to bring in workers from the charter colonies to man the key shipyards at Utopia Planitia due to the lack of a trained and skilled labor force in Sol system.

The GDP of the core sectors, once the heart of Federation industry, was falling as the expenses of the BLN went up. Unlike the charter colonies that didn't have BLN, there was less emigration from the core regions to accomodate the rising population. Immigration from the colonies, in the form of failed entrepreneurs and the poor looking for housing and sustenance, placed even greater burdens on the system. Only the Vulcans were uneffected, as the grip of strict devotion to Surak remained as tight as ever. Vulcans kept working despite the comforts offered, since it was illogical, to them, to become dormant and parasitical upon society. Economists began publishing dire estimates and warnings; the Federation couldn't last this way. By the end of the century, it was estimated that the GDP of Earth would be a mere fifth of it's GDP in 2300 even as it's population rose by thirty-five percent (immigration being partially offset by declining birth rates).
Even Sirok finally turned on his own system. In March 2343, at the age of 194, he published another work. It's title sent waves throughout the New Way; The Failed Experiment. Sirok decided that the Federation could not implement the system he envisaged properly. The other races did not embrace Surak's principles; the embracing of logic and rejection of emotional thinking, the renunciation of personal gain and comfort for working together to better society. A contempotary Human advisor commented "It was as if Marx had renounced the Communist Manifesto in his dotage." The effect on the New Way was profound. Their founder had rejected them. Something must have gone wrong.
Turok thought he found what had happened. The New Way had allowed their ideals to be corrupted by the Neo-Socialists, who had failed to follow Surak. He urged the New Way to reject the Neo-Socialists' agendas, to begin scaling back BLN until the people could be educated in the teaching of Surak. The Neo-Socialists counter-attacked. The New Way was outdated now, nothing more than a pack of weak-stomached Vulcans and Surakists. Only the Neo-Socialists could bring the Enlightened Society to fulfillment.
The Surakist label was clearly negative and unpopular. Despite the claims of the Federation being completely tolerant and unracist, there was always racist sentiments boiling under the surface in a number of communities, particularly against Vulcans, who were perceived as insufferably arrogant. Now the Neo-Socialists tapped that anti-Vulcan sentiment and directed it against the New Way. If a member of the New Way wanted to avoid being tainted by the label "Surakist", they had to break with Turok. Most did; the defectors merged with the Neo-Socialists who in turn removed Turok and elected a new President, a middle-aged Andorian named Jirvshk la'Jart.
Jirvshk had spent his younger years as a member and "agitator" of the Young Socialist Party of Andor in the 2290s, "agitating" on his Homeworld for a return to the "honored ways of our ancestors" and a rejection of "Human materialism". He had served as a member of the party hierarchy for years, working as a bureaucrat in the Andorian Ministry of BLN Distribution and holding it's Minister position for three years before his first election to Andor's seat in the Federation Council in 2332. In 2340, he was furthermore appointed Chairman of the Socialist Party Central Committee. Unlike prior Chairmen, he did not give up his Council seat, and kept the Chairman position even after being elected President. He imemdiately pushed through new protocol; Jirvshk intended that from then on, all Socialist Presidents of the Council would also be Chairmen of the Party's Central Committee. Jirvshk also used his positions, united, to crack down on dissent within the Party (which became capitalized in official correspondence). Dissenters in the bureaucracy were sacked and all dissent was threatened with potential expulsion from the party ranks. That threat alone was severe enough. With the merger, most of the bureaucratic positions managing both the BLN and the colonial levies belonged to the ruling Party. Jirvshk's "reforms" were proving a dangerous combination. Irate historians pointed out that by merging the leadership of the Government to the leadership of the Party and enforcing loyalty to the Party line, he was beginning to emulate the government type of the Soviet Union and it's satellites in the 20th Century. By the time the news widely circulated, Jirvshk had already begun his press reforms and managed to quash the debate in the core sectors by denying it air-time (it continued in the charter colonies, fueling secessionist and anti-government sentiment).
One of the first things Jirvshk did was try to put a positive spin on what had happened. The end of the New Way/Neo-Socialist ruling coalition was not a hostile one; it was a merger of the two parties, to better govern the Federation. To help facilitate government public relations, Jirvshk established the Federation Press Service and granted them a portion of the public communications bandwidth, which had been nationalized under Turok. Press corporations that protested had their licenses revoked. Two, Murdoch Broadcasting and Earth Today, sued and would eventually be heard before the Federation Supreme Court (though their victory in 2347 would be too little, too late, and would be ignored by Jirvshk).

To show that the merger of the Neo-Socialists and the New Way was an honest one, Jirvshk changed the party's name. They became the Party of the Federation's Ideals and would soon be called "Idealogues". What was left of the New Way, under Turok, became the Social Enlightenment Party, but within ten years their membership would be almost entirely composed of Vulcans or non-Vulcans converted to Surakism. A third party, the Social Progressives, would eventually come into being in the 2350s when Jirvshk's successors proved less capable than he in centralizing Party power in the government. The Idealogue Party was now the ruling power of the Federation.

Jirvshk came into office with only a year left before the "year of maximum danger". The Klingons had begun rearming on schedule, with their equivalent of the 2338 Fiscal Year seeing an military budget increase of ten percent. Quo'noS' ozone layer was declared completely repaired a year later. By 2344, they were back to pre-Khitomer spending levels while the Federation was at an all-time low. Jirvshk wanted re-armament but not more than he wanted to maintain and expand the BLN, which he saw as the key to keeping the support for Socialism in the represented core sectors. The Galaxy Project seemed the best solution to reminding the Klingons of how strong the Federation was. But Jirvshk's plans for the future did not include the defense contractors. He had no legal pretense, yet, for nationalizing them, so he simply removed them from the loop. The Federation Starship Design Bureau (FSDB), the Federation Science Council, and various other new bureaucracies for reseach and development were established and staffed with Party loyalists in key positions. They were directed to take over the Galaxy Project. The defense contractors, pasrticularly PellCorp, were disgusted, but could do nothing about it.
The Party loyalists, in turn, were highly nepotistic. For instance, Dr. Matthew Brahms, the Director of the Reactor Development Division, hired his own daughter to help develop the Galaxy-class's warp core despite her failure as a civilian engineer with PellCorp. The differing divisions in the FSDB bickered and struggled, forcing Bureau Director Gora Thashkta - the daughter-in-law of one of Jirvshk's old comrades from his agitating days - to mediate, and in turn she often had to get Jirvshk's permission for budget re-alignment as new technologies for the ship were proposed, scrapped, or altered. The Galaxy-class, originally scheduled to be built by the end of the decade and the beginning of the next, ended up ten years overdue; the U.S.S. Galaxy would not be finished until 2362 and it's second unit, named the Enterprise after the current Enterprise's destruction at Narendra III, would be commissioned in 2363.

Narendra III turned out to be Jirvshk's salvation. The attacks there and at Khitomer by the Romulan Empire convinced the Klingons that the Romulans were too great a threat to leave uncontested while attacking the Federation. They met with Jirvshk and in January of 2347 the Khitomer Accords were "re-affirmed" by the two governments. The Klingons apparently respected Jirvshk more than his earlier two predecessors. He was a "warrior king", according to correspondence from Ambassador Dagktor. The Klingon Empire could rely on him and on the strength of Starfleet. The Klingons never really understood how weak Starfleet had become until the wars of the 50s, and the realization didn't really set in until after Wolf 359 (ironically after the Federation itself begin re-arming).
Jirvshk's external problems were apparently solved. The time for inward consolidation had come. Jirvshk was well-read and a fan of ancient and recent Andorian history. He admired, simultaneously, the ancient autocratic kings of Andor's pre-industrial societies and the Socialist governments that had ruled two of Andor's continents in the two centuries just before contact with other races occurred. Andor, like Earth, had seen the rise of Communist government, but unlike Earth's failed experiment with Communism, Andor's brand managed to stay in power until after alien contact reinforced their enemies and led to their downfall from an inability to meet the technological challenge (most non-Idealogue historians today agree that the Andorian anti-Communist governments' acquisition of alien technology did to their Communist govermments what Reagan's military revolution did to the Soviet Union). Jirvshk believed that Andorian Socialism, unlike it's disproven Human counterpart, could be imposed on the entire Federation. And he was the man to do it.
In 2346, the Idealogues faced their first elections and won nine out of ten seats. New Anglian Parliamentarian Frederick Howard, Duke of New Norfolk, lamented that "the rot is complete". The Federation's core sector populations were happy and content with the BLN. The Idealogues promised to keep it going, while their enemies did not. Thus the Idealogues won easily. Jirvshk took his opportunity. Within days of the results, he removed four of the other ten members of the Party Central Committee, accusing them of "Surakism". Their crime had been to suggest placing limits on the BLN - a politically suicidal thought that could cost the Idealogue Party prestige and support.
After this leadership purge, Jirvshk went after Starfleet indirectly. Though most of it's admirals were considered politically reliable, with the resignations of Sirok's supporters in 2343, Jirvshk distrusted the rank and file. He especially distrusted the Starfleet Marine Corps, which still recruited heavily from the same charter colonies that had reacted negatively to his rise. Jirvshk abolished the Marine Corps with an Executive Order on the 10th of August 2346 and sacked all of it's colonial-born officers. Starfleet Command protested that they needed a force to protect their ships and installations, and to use for planetary invasion. Jirvshk immediately forced through Council legislation establishing the Federation Security Force, formally approved on the 11th of August in a special session for the matter, which was staffed with the remains of the Marine Corps. The FSF for short, they recruited from the "loyal' inner worlds (which did not include Vulcan), gaining mostly listliss youth and the Party's faithful. Officially under the government, they in effect answered to Jirvshk alone, through the Party bureaucrats whom he placed in command.
Jirvshk decided that Starfleet Command wasn't as loyal as he wanted. He signed orders two weeks after the elections that purged Starfleet Command of several leading Admirals who had risen to prominence in Sulu and Jovark's days. Starfleet Commander-in-Chief Joseph Bruti was among those removed, as was the head of Starfleet Operations, Admiral Demora Sulu. The sacking of Hikaru Sulu's daughter, so soon after his passing (he died five days after the election), provoked a protest in San Francisco. It seemed that even twenty-six years of luxury under the BLN was not enough to completely eradicate the legend of the Kirk era from the minds of the common citizenry. Jirvshk decided to act against this "reactionary" tendency by ordering Starfleet to remove the name of Kirk and his comrades, anyone closely associated with him, from their list of potential ship names. He also had the section of Starfleet's history museum dedicated to Kirk's exploits reduced in size and scope and financed a propaganda campaign to revision Kirk's importance to the Federation. His reputed anti-Klingon racism, his violent tendencies, and his rebelliousness and militaristic impulses were espoused in a way to try and turn the public away from their hero worship for Kirk. The campaign mostly failed. The citizens of the Federation would continue to worship Kirk as the ideal Starfleet commander. Jirvshk's subordinantes hid the truth from him with rigged polls and by using Party faithful and hired citizens to hold scripted "protests" against Kirk's surviving comrades whenever they made public appearances. When Jirvshk acted on the false data and ordered the reduction of Leonard McCoy's pension, several members of Starfleet Command, including the heads of Starfleet Medical, secretly sent money to McCoy to compensate. Jirvshk never learned of this rebellion against his authority, probably for the better, as his likely reaction - a purge - would have crippled Starfleet's Medical division for a decade.
The FSF were officially supposed to provide infantry for military purposes and for providing security to government installations. Very quickly, it's Party officers proved the FSF was effective as a secret police force too. Though Jirvshk hadn't done anything to directly effect existing Constitutional rights, the FSF harassed his political adversaries, business owners, and visiting colonials. They recruited spies and moved them into the colonies and set up spy networks that reached into the upper levels of several charter colony governments. When Jirvshk heard that Nikolai Simonov, the Premier of Novya Moskva, was contemplating secession over the establishment of dues over the Muscovite systems in May of 2347, he had him secretly arrested and brought to Earth for trial. The FSF was already in position to be used to suppress the resulting protests. When they were called in to deal with protestors in the Muscovite capitol of Nikolingrad, force had to be used after the protestors began throwing Molotov cocktails. Sixteen people were killed and many wounded. Jirvshk used his control of public communications to block the news from getting out immediately. His propagandists used the time to spin the crackdown as the FSF responding to attacks against them. Jirvshk's enemies still protested. He was becoming a dictator. Juchiro Kanaga, President of Nippon, called on the Federation Council to remove Jirvshk. Kanaga was targeted for arrest by the FSF, but the local FSF commander was unwilling to open fire on the Nipponese Presidential Guards (he was later purged and imprisoned for insubordination). The FSF backed down and Nippon was "punished" by having Starfleet reduce it's presence, which resulted in a twenty percent increase of attacks by Orion pirates.
As Jirvshk struggled to consolidate his power, the budget problems did not improve. The Federation Government was going into debt from the burden of the BLN and abuse of the RUA. Jirvshk tackled the problem in two fashions, both of which having horrible consequences for the future. First, Jirvshk imposed dues on the charter colonies that had been exempt since their establishment during Sulu's Presidency, resulting in the incident on Novya Moskva. For a generation these worlds had generated a great deal of revenue through trade with the core sectors. Now their economies, just now becoming self-sufficient, were effectively reduced by a fifth. Discontent spiked, especially among the older people who in their youth had escaped to the outer charter colonies to escape economic stagnation from the inner colonies' dues. Several protests included the burning of the Federation flag and nationalist, secessionist sentiments gained popularity. In several cases the Party bureaucrats sent to begin overseeing the due payments were subjected to harrassment or even attack.

Jirvshk counter-attacked by reducing Starfleet presence in the most rebellious colonies. The Cardassians raided several for resources and slaves for their industrial complex or for brutish "training exercises" for their army conscripts, including the infamous Rape of Nova Savona in July of 2348. Raids by the Tsen'kethi were also common and would end up provoking the Federation-Tsen'kethi War in the next decade. By 2349, most of the colonies in the region were battered by the combined squeezing of the due payments and damage from the raiding. Thousands of colonists were missing, presumed dead or somewhere in Cardassian space slaving away in forced labor camps. Violence against the bureaucrats had dropped to nothing and Jirvshk re-deployed Starfleet into the region in the first months of '49. He considered the region pacified, but he had in fact created for the Federation government a deadly enemy in the region. The local colonists would not soon forget Jirvshk's great crime against them, and they and their children would swear that it would never happen again.

At the same time as he imposed dues on the outer colonies, Jirvshk ordered the Secretariat of Finance to begin "issuing" more Federation credits. The Credit had been developed by the Government thirty years after the Federation's founding, mostly for the intent of being easy travel money that would be honored anywhere in the Federation and most places outside of it. At one time it was even valued on dilithium, before the re-crystallization process had been discovered. In recent years, the government had been issuing "living credits" for citizens to use with the BLN. There was still a theoretical limit to how much one could acquire with the BLN standard, so the living credits had some value as only so many were issued, depending on the number of people in a household. Jirvshk combined these currencies. They were not printed or coined, of course, and were not technically money; they were now just government-issued credits to ensure everyone had the BLN.
Naturally, every world or government had it's own currency. Some, like the Earth and Pacifican Dollars, Algrossan Mark, Anglian Pound, and Nova Roman Lira were quite popular and widespread as recognizable, valuable hard currency. By this time the Earth dollar was out of circulation, as the need for it collapsed with the destruction of Earth's consumer economy (Several other core world currencies had suffered similar fates), but the others were still in circulation and only weakened by the oppressive dues on the issuing governments. By Federation law, the credit could not be devalued compared to these currencies beyond a certain point (that law had been implemented over a century before to protect the citizenry from market changes in the relative value of the Federation credit, ensuring they could always get hard currency for it). The Federation Government still used the credit as a form of money in dealing with the private companies it bought goods from, including those in the charter colonies that it purchased BLN goods from due to lapses in production in the core worlds. The businesses were paid in credits that were worthless, but by law banks and other institutions had to honor them and allow them to be cashed in for hard currency, even as price controls ensured that the companies were effectively operating at a loss whenever the Government bought their goods. This produced a drain on the Federation economy as the colonies' hard currency was dragged down by the unrestrained issuing of the credit.
Jirvshk seemed to care little. As far as he was concerned, capitalism was a deviation of good social attitude. The glorification of amassing wealth was immoral, and the system it created - companies, corporations, stock markets - should be destroyed in favor of a government run system in which society made the decisions, not wealthy and decadent sentients. To further this end, he needed strong, personal control of the entire Federation, backed up by force and subversion if necessary.
The FSF was now the Party's personal army, but Jirvshk wanted a better apparatus for dealing with internal and external security threats so that the FSF could concentrate on being the visible arm of the Party's forces. He found his solution in a review of Starfleet Intelligence. One of it's bodies was Section 31, an analytical branch devoted to the interpretation of field intel. Jirvshk co-opted it by appointing one of his Party loyalists to lead it. Elements of the FSF were brought into Section 31 to operate under it's control against both internal and external threats. They would begin spying against dissidents, charter colony governments, and foreign governments. Jirvshk likely intended for Section 31 to be the Secret Police and Intelligence branch of his regime.
The transformation of the Federation into a pseudo-Communist state continued. By 2350 there were signs that the BLN's bureaucracy and management were showing the same corruptive tendancies as the old Soviet Union's apparatchik. Materials and hard currency sent to the Federation coffers were being skimmed away and sold for the wealth of bureaucrats, while the bureaucrats, to avoid Jirvshk's wrath, were cooking the books to avoid detection. The nationalized farms and factories providing goods for the BLN were later proved to be having the same problems.
Jirvshk was not finished. Ultimate power was within his grasp. He had already appointed close friends - and fellow Socialist idealogues - into key government positions, but he was not yet out of reach. He had cowed the colonies in the Alpha Quadrant frontier region by reminding them of their helplessness without Starfleet. His internal party purges had guaranteed a bureaucracy that was mostly loyal to him, for fear that he would fire them for deviating from his vision. Many of his would-be rivals had already been purged from the Party ranks and thus the government. But he could still be removed by the Federation Council or the Central Committee, who were growing leery of Jirvshk's growing authoritarianism. They would have to be removed before Jirvshk could become sole authority of the Federation.

We now know from recovered archival data that Jirvshk had apparently planned an internal coup and purge. Jirvshk, as Party Chairman, scheduled a meeting for the 2nd of August of that year with several leading members of the Federation Council (who would presumably be re-elected) and the Party itself at the Party headquarters in Trier on Earth. The same day, the FSF was scheduled to do large-scale, divisional maneuvers in Europe and in California. It seems obvious that Jirvshk was ready to take the final step; removing his potential rivals in the Party and Starfleet and taking direct control. But on June 6th, while making a tour of a new replicator assembly plant on Andor, Jirvshk suddenly collapsed. His physicians reported he had come down with Firvakh's Sickness, a terminal neurological disease. It was one of the quicker cases. Two days after his collapse, physicians agreed Jirvshk was no longer capable of governing. The disease's degeneration of his brain continued, and on the 13th Jirvshk slipped into a coma. He died on the 19th, taking all of his dreams of being a Socialist autocrat with him.
The Government announced a week of mourning to be held. Jirvshk's body was laid in state in the Presidential Palace Courtyard of Paris from the 27th of June to the 27th of July. The Chairwoman of the Security Council, Deborah Miller, served as interim President until the Council Elections were over. The FSF exercises were predictably post-poned. On the 2nd of August, the same day that Jirvshk was possibly intending to seize total power, Deborah Miller was elected President of the Federation Council and Chairwoman of the Party's Central Committee. She immediately renounced some of Jirvshk's strong-handed tactics and dedicated her Presidency to the pursuit of "Galactic Peace". The Federation's brief flirtation with a potential dictatorship was over. Sirok, now 201 years old and suffering from the early stages of Bendii Syndrome, was present at her official inaugeration. He gave Miller his personal endorsement in what was his final public appearance; the architect of the "Enlightened Society" died on February 19th, 2351.

More in next post

Miller was the youngest Federation President in history, at only fifty-six years old. She had grown up under the rule of the New Way and Socialists and had been a dedicated member of the New Way up until Jirvshk had forcefully united them to the Socialists. He had given her the post of Security Chairwoman because of her connections to the New Way, probably hoping she would act contrary to the Government's desires and give him an excuse to reduce the power of the Security Council in favor of the Party Central Committee. Miller spent most of Jirvshk's Presidency playing a glorified secretary on matters of defense, as the traditional powers of the Security Council leadership were assumed de facto by Jirvshk. During this time period, however, Miller expanded her friendships into the traditional core of the old Socialists and helped to protect some of those who dissented against Jirvshk's more brutal methods. In a dangerous move, she even signed her name in a protest to Jirvshk about not giving aid to the colonies on the Cardassian border after the Rape of Nova Savona. Jirvshk most likely intended to purge her with the others and never intended for her to succeed him.

Jirvshk, in fact, had no chosen successor. He was still middle-aged for an Andorian, after all. Death was decades away and he knew from his study of history that rulers who appointed successors before their rule was absolute sometimes lost that rule to their intended successors. As such, he went out of his way to purge or reduce the power of any potential rival. This had the side effect of clearing out from immediate contention other politicians who might have tried to emulate Jirvshk's policies. Those who agreed with him were completely dependent upon Jirvshk for their positions, so that when he died they had little hope of being chosen by the existing Council. Instead, all that remained to lead was Miller and the core of the old New Way, which believed that peace had to be maintained at all cost to give the Federation time to adjust to the pains of their system. If only they could have enough time to get the BLN set up elsewhere, the secessionist sentiments in the colonies would subside and the Federation would be back on track. Naively, Miller seemed to believe that she could build the Enlightened Society even when it's own creator believed it impossible.

Miller agreed with Jirvshk on one thing. Whoever was President should be the Party's leader as well. It only made sense that the one senior member who stood above the rest enough to win the Party rank and file in the Council would also lead the Party. This meant her at the time. Fortunately for the Federation's legitimacy, there would be no cases of the Committee electing a replacement for their Chair before the Council could elect a President, not until Maria Sandoval's restoration of Jirvshk's ideals in the aftermath of the First Civil War. Miller proved as much a workaholic as Jirvshk had been, often working sixteen hour days shuttling back and forth between San Francisco, Paris, and Trier to run the Government and the Party.

The Party had not yet completely taken over the State as the Communist Party had in the Soviet Union, but it was getting close to it. Under Jirvshk, over seventy percent of the bureaucracy was brought under direct Party control, leaving only minor bureaucratic positions unconsolidated before Jirvshk's death. The Clerk of the Party's Central Committee was assigned the responsibility of ensuring these bureaucrats followed the Party line. Miller removed that responsibility. The Idealogue Party was not a monolithic entity, but like the Federation, a union of many different thinkers and idealists who could, together, do more than a single person dictating to the others. This would eventually cause chaos in the Party's hierarchy as newer managers and bureaucrats proved more individualistic - and ambitious - than the unambitious hacks that Jirvshk had been installing. For the moment, though, they kept their positions, so Miller's removal of the restraints did not effect the Party's control over the State for the time being.
There was resistance to Miller from two sides. On one side was opposition to her weakness in defense and foreign policy. Councilmen and various government bureaucrats from within and from outside the Party opposed her pacifism, pointing out that Starfleet was needed to keep the aggressive alien empires at bay. Miller had little patience for these "militarists". Sirok had proven four decades ago that military strength only provoked fear and uncertainty, and the impulse to attack before the other side was ready. The peace would surely be kept with negotiations and reasonable concessions. Miller's naivety would, ironically, kill more innocent people than Jirvshk's cold-bloodedness.
To deal with her opponents, Miller brought out one of Jirvshk's plans. She convinced the Council to allow her to ban from participation members who associated with organizations that displayed or advocated "unreasonable aggression against other races", "intolerance", "racism", and "anti-social thinking". The measure, dubbed the Tolerance in Government Act, passed and Miller used it to ban what handful of right-wing parties remained, on various and often differing grounds. It was her one major spurt of authoritarianism and would actually bring about the birth of the Idealogues' one major enemy later in the decade, the Social Progressives, after the Supreme Court struck down the act.
The other enemies were Jirvshk's closest supporters, led by FSDB Director Gora Thashkta, Senior Starfleet Commissioner Kevlask Metorhk, Section 31 Director Revork tha'Jwish, and Yevgeny Mishkin, Director of the FSF. All, like Jirvshk, believed in imposing a dictatorship for the good of the Federation and the advancement of Socialism. All posed a threat to Miller's vision of the Idealogues. They were all purged by Miller by the end of 2350 (with the exception of Revork, who cleverly supported Miller against the others to ensure his own power), along with their senior lieutenants, including the commander of the FSF's elite Earth Guards, self-declared "Comrade General" Maria Sandoval. Mishkin and Sandoval proved the most difficult to deal with post-purge, as they went underground with many of the fanatics they had trained in the FSF to form the Red Guards. Though Mishkin died while operating against the Cardassians a decade later, Sandoval lived on and would be there when the First Civil War opened up the government to a full totalitarian takeover.
Revork, surviving the purge, made sure to hide the true extent of Section 31's resources from Miller. He claimed Jirvshk had been waiting until after a coup to turn Section 31 into secret police. They were just a bunch of analysts now that Jirvshk's plans had not been met. As Jirvshk's handling of Section 31 had been secret and undocumented, Miller did not know otherwise and Revork's lie worked. He turned Section 31 into an apparatus to spy on the government for blackmail and, at the same time, to act as a black ops group in dealing with growing enemy threats to the Federation. Section 31's very existance was in fact classified (as it was a secret analytical branch of Starfleet Intelligence), though most governments settled for refusing to confirm or deny their existance on the odd occasion someone inquired.
Many of those purged by Miller would be replaced with the victims of Jirvshk's purges. As the Federation was not the Soviet Union and had a Constitution that forbade summary arrest and execution, those purged could not be sent to gulags or shot. They were merely unemployed and not recognized by the Party. Which meant they were available for rehire as soon as a new government came to power and were restored, including many old New Way people. Miller even named Turok's daughter T'Kyra as the new Director of the FSDB.

With the government shakeup completed by the first quarter of 2351, Miller found herself having to deal with the same problems Jirvshk had. A rising debt, BLN costs rising with it, and falling production. Miller was open-minded and asked for help. She found that even economists who were in the Idealogue Party thought that the BLN had to be restricted or fixed to taking jobs. This would end the slide in production, at the very least. Otherwise, the BLN's burden would become increasingly hard to carry. It was also pointed out that despite Sirok's desire for all Federation worlds to get the BLN, it had only been expanded to those worlds with Council representation. Only a very small handfall of charter colonies had the BLN and there wasn't enough resources to expand it even further and maintain the system already in place. Miller didn't know what to do.
Her new Senior Starfleet Commissioner, Janice McNeil, provided the solution she sought. McNeil had been a Commissioner when T'Par had performed the secret cutbacks under Turok. She recommended the same. Starfleet wanted a new line of ships, proposed under Jirvshk as the New Fleet Initiative (NFI), that would cost a great deal, an estimated quadrillion credits in cost. Resources that could be put to better use elsewhere in maintaining the BLN. The NFI was drastically reduced in favor of modernizing the Excelsior fleet again. It was actually a waste of resources, as the quality of phaser weapons had not greatly improved in the twenty years since their last upgrades had been finished.
To prevent pro-Starfleet members of the Party from attacking her, Miller agreed to allow Starfleet to use elements of the overdue and faltering Galaxy Project to build a new class of intermediary ship. The Nebula Project, as it was dubbed, became racked with similar problems. The Federation Science Council insisted that the ship be able to function as a science ship. Starfleet wanted a dedicated warship, but merely saying "dedicated warship" angered Miller when senior Starfleet admirals met with her to argue their case. Miller's position was unwavering. Starfleet could not be allowed to field "warships", since it would undo her moral authority as a peacekeeper. When a member of Starfleet's Fleet Planning Staff, Admiral Gerald LeMay, reminded her of Vegetius' saying "Si vis pacem, para bellum" ("If you wish for peace, prepare for war"), she sacked him and relegated him to a frontier command in Sector 221-B. Starfleet got the message loud and clear and never again brought up the subject with Miller. Eventually Starfleet managed to compromise with the Science Council. The Nebula-class ship would be a heavy cruiser in tonnage, but with a modular configuration; a pod placed "above" the primary saucer hull, attached to the drive hull, with the ship's mission determining whether it had a sensor pod or a weapons pod. Unlike Jirvshk, Miller allowed PellCorp to be called in to help design the Nebula and to build it. They threw aside Brahm's warp core, criticized and then modified the pod arrangement, and ended up building the first flight of ten Nebula ships at ten percent under the estimated budget and with the first ships delivered in 2357, an entire year ahead of schedule. Many Idealogues were rather uncomfortable with a private, morally inferior contractor outperforming the government's socially-conscious workers.
With Starfleet placated and funds freed up from slashing down NFI, Miller tackled the budget problem. First off, the immediate cash problem was solved by increasing dues to 25%. To deal with the problem of stagnation and falling production, a propaganda campaign was begun in the core worlds. Citizens were encouraged to reduce their use of the system and to find and hold jobs to produce so that everyone else could have their prosperity too. "There's plenty to go around" was the popular slogan of the campaign. Propaganda glorified the idea of working to better the Federation - and society - as a whole. The BLN provided food and housing so that they could work in happiness, assured of the future. The propaganda campaign had some effect. An entire generation of youth had grown up in the BLN and for many, the wonder had gone out of it. Without a challenge to draw their attention, they latched onto whatever cause they could find. Miller gave them one by encouraging them to take up jobs in farms, factories, or other things, or to join Starfleet or the FSF. She also pursued programs to bring the charter colonies back into line. She wanted to work with them, not against them. She publically apologized for Jirvshk's abandonment of them to foreign attack and asked them to be supportive of the Federation, that as soon as they fixed the previous errors the Federation Government would expand the BLN to them. Miller quickly found that so long as she didn't cut the dues, and in fact wanted to increase them, most charter colonies wanted nothing to do with the Federation. Jirvshk's strong-handed tactics were beyond her, but Miller was assured by McNeil that there was no need to worry. So long as the colonies thought Starfleet was protecting them, they would remain in the Federation and accept dues over time, even if it meant a lot of grumbling and posturing.
Miller's recent experiences with Starfleet had been bitter. The Admiralty were mostly crusty old men and women who were junior officers earlier in the century. They bitterly remembered the betrayal over Tomed and remembered just how genuine Klingon desires for peace had been, despite Miller's position to the contrary. They had grown up idolizing Pike and Kirk and their exploits in a galaxy where the Federation was the sole beacon of free civilization, and had to be defended as such. They did not like Miller or her pacifist ideals, which they thought were ridiculous in the face of aggression from violent alien empires. Miller particularly disliked NCOs, the career enlistees who had little patience for ideology and who constantly berated the young junior officers and enlistees loyal to her vision. Miller decided that all Starfleet personnel should be trained to become potential officers, and that training would include proper ideaological study to remind them of the Federation's noble ideals. Members of Starfleet would become the standard bearers of the Enlightened Society, always diplomatic and committed to maintaining peace above all else. The decision to not maintain a respectable NCO corps, the backbone of a professional military, had horrible effects upon Starfleet, worsening the problems they'd had since the initial purge after Tomed in the early part of the century. The true depth of this mistake would be felt for the next twenty years all the way to the Dominion War.

Miller also took it upon herself to order their uniform changed. For over seventy years Starfleet had used a maroon jacket with rank insignia on the jacket's front clip for their officers, and a long-sleeved pull-on jacket for enlistees. Officers also wore service ribbons and medals, depending upon the occasion. Miller insisted this be stopped. These things, in her mind, glorified militarism and conflict. Starfleet was to be the keeper of the peace and it could not glorify any kind of conflict. With her Presidential authority, Miller ordered the ribbons removed from military uniform standards and had the uniforms re-organized. The result was a seemless two-piece jacket and trousers, black with service colors, with a communicator badge in the shape of Starfleet's signature arrowhead and rank pips on the collar as the only adornment permitted. For a short time, there was also a female version of the uniform that was a one-piece pull-on that brought back to memory the immodest mini-skirt uniforms of the prior century. Starfleet officers protested the uniform change and more than a number resigned; others in more distant posting refused to wear the new uniform (they were eventually brought to heel).
Under Miller, the corruption of the bureaucracy blossomed. Fear of Jirvshk had kept them from going too far, but Miller's weakness in internal policy - her favored slogan in discussions with the Central Committee was "Those who are not against us are with us" - effectively gave them a license to steal whatever they wanted. A substantial black market in various advanced pharmaceuticals and medical equipment stolen from the BLN distribution network had already crept in. It's most likely that the Klingon Medical Reforms in the 2350s was brought about by access to this black market more than any internal reform. Hard currency from the charter colonies also had a habit of disappearing, and ther were several Party officials at upper levels in the bureaucracy who openly benefited from skimming state funds. Their control of transport resources and government warehouses allowed many bureaucrats to funnel goods of varying kinds into the black market, or to buy illegal goods; the plentiful supply of Romulan ale was an obvious result.
Another issue that was coming to Miller's attention was the great cost being paid in transporting BLN-related materials from producers in the charter colonies to worlds with the BLN. As production in the core worlds fell, their economies - including the BLN - became more and more dependent upon goods and materials from the charter worlds. Transport costs were adding to the growing debt of the system. Miller consulted with her Cabinent and decided on the old solution of price controls on the shipping companies and following nationalization if need be, as well as price controls on shipyards so the Government could buy it's own fleet of transports. The Council was asked to pass the BLN Support Act in May of 2351; it was passed on the 28th after two days of debate.
The transport and shipbuilding corporations proved better prepared for a fight than any other group the Federation government had targeted so far. Nine out of ten of the biggest carrier companies and the five main shipyard owners, including PellCorp, filed a class-action suit in the Federation High Courts in the following month, charging that the BLN Support Act was a violation of their Constitutional rights to private property and free enterprise. The Central Committee, still having some of Jirvshk's men, urged Miller to order Starfleet and the FSF to seize the companies' assets. Miller again proved she was not Jirvshk; she left it to the courts. Fortunately for her, the matter would not be ruled upon until 2355, after Miller and the Party stuffed the Supreme Court with Idealogues.

The Federation High Courts had become filled with Idealogues over the previous twenty years, but the Supreme Court had remained virtually the same since Sulu's time. It was the last body capable of blocking Idealogue policies, as it had done to Jirvshk in 2347 by ruling in favor of the press companies he had stripped licenses from. Jirvshk had ignored the Court, setting off a constitutional crisis by declaring that "the Court has made the decision, now it must enforce it!". Between 2347 and 2350 there were several incidents of the FSF and government harassing the Justices in one form or another. Unscheduled inspections of their homes and offices, stories by the state press slandering relatives and friends, and the use of young party radicals to vandalize and personally harrass the Justices and their families. Miller called the pressure off when she became President, believing she could reason with the Justices.
She later changed her mind after the Justices proved unwilling to bend the law for her ideals. In April of 2353, the Courts heard a case concerning her banning of political right-wing parties, Federation Defense League vs. The Presidency of the Federation Council. The FDL was one of the marginalized right-wing parties that Miller had banned from the Federation Council with the Tolerance in Government Act. Miller's government argued that if the Tolerance Act was overturned, it would hurt the Federation's foreign standing and allow extremist parties to participate in government. The FDL's argument was more to the point. Miller was trying to ensure a monopoly of the Idealogues in government by banning all parties save the Vulcans' Social Enlightenment Party and had violated Constitutional rights to free speech and participation in government to centralize party power. The Court sided with the FDL with a 7-4 vote and overturned the Tolerance Act.
Miller was enraged. The Court was undermining the Federation itself by allowing pro-military parties to run. They might even provoke a war by scaring other alien powers into attacking the Federation before they could come to power. Her advisors tried to calm her down. The FDL and the other parties had been out of power for decades. They could never win a seat because the majorities would always vote against them over their desire to reform and restrict the BLN. Miller stopped short of open conflict with the Court. She did authorize a propaganda effort to turn public support against the Court and the parties it opened up to the political process.
In the end, the FDL and it's allies proved the Party wrong. The parties had learned their lessons about opposing the BLN. It would be impossible and it would be better to hit the Idealogues where it would hurt them; their defense policies and the growing corruption in the system. After high-level meetings in the summer of 2353, the minor parties banded together to become the Social Progressives, with a few exceptions who thought the new coalition was selling out the charter colonies who were inreasingly becoming the economic and industrial core of the Federation.
Even as the remnants of the Right were pursuing a more pragmatic position from which to attack the Idealogues, Miller approved pro-BNA propaganda efforts in the charter colonies. Miller's personal view was that the ordinary citizen wanted to have the BLN and the charter colonies did not have it because their governments were controlled by greedy corporate influences. Polls to the contrary were dismissed as error or counter-propaganda against the government. The initial efforts seemed to succeed. In July of 2353, a year after the propaganda efforts began, the De Soto Worlds voted in an Idealogue government, which passed a law to institute their own variation of the BLN by raising taxes and instituting BNA-style measures. Miller happily brought it into the fold of the Federation's BLN system. A month later, in time with the Federation's Council Elections, another Idealogue government was elected in the Tellarite-majority Throjva Confederacy. It followed the same measures as the De Soto Worlds. Miller thought her views were succeeding.

In truth, the De Soto Worlds and the Throjva Confederacy were so weakened economically that takeover was inevitable. The same was true for the other charter colonies taken over by Idealogue governments in the following decade. Having been under the dues system the longest, and having their private consumer industries long crushed under the oppressive weight of the Federation's price controls and nationalization practices, these colonies had been plunged into economic recession by the 2330s and an outright depression by the time of Miller's Presidency. Their population growth was in the negative, due to the simultaneous flood of people leaving for outer colonies and the thriving private sectors there and the people leaving for BLN-supported worlds where they would at least be guaranteed a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and clothing. It was easy for the Idealogues to encourage the mass of unemployed or struggling lower class people left that they should institute the BLN on their own until the Federation could expand it to them. Of course, their production decline virtually insured their government would go bankrupt as it was forced to import whatever the Federation's BLN system didn't take. Miller likely accounted for that when she expanded to them the BLN despite opposition from the Secretariats of Finance and Living Standards.
What Miller never really understood was that despite the constant drains on their economies, the other charter worlds still maintained marginally healthy economies. Though stagnation from losing a quarter of their GDPs to the government was constant, there was still enough production and trade to ensure a maintainance of their own system. It would not be until the devaluation of local hard currencies grew to dangerous levels combined with the Federaiton's re-armament tactics that the system would be threatened with collapse. As a result, her pro-BLN propaganda campaign mostly failed. The local public was too bitter about the system and a perception of core worlder "laziness" - fostered from years of watching the core worlds become a virtual paradise on their labor - was beginning to grow within the charter colonies' populations.
Even then, there were some exceptions to the maintainance of the system. For instance, some of the charter colonies ended up having to subsidize their consumer industries to make up for losses from the Federation price controls forcing companies to sell BLN goods to the government at a loss. Such measures only served to embitter the populace even more.

2354 was the first election where the Idealogues had to deal with a united front amongst the remnants of the Right. The Social Progressives ran an excellent campaign under Maralo Tevala of Trill, one of the few non-Idealogues left on the Council and the future President. Tevala and the Progressives promised to maintain the BLN; their primary concern was with the Idealogues' "criminal" neglect of the Federation's defenses. The retired Marilyn Cobalt stepped back into the public light after twenty years, campaigning on her own for the Progressives and their promise to restore Starfleet to what it was under Sulu and Jovark. Jovark also emerged from retirement to publicly back the Progressives. The Idealogues took a hit. Tevala won re-election by an even larger margin from his original election in 2350 (mostly as a Trill reaction to Jirvshk's growing authoritarianism) and the Social Progressives found themselves winning a quarter of the seats in the Council. Tevala told a crowd of cheering supporters in the Trill city of Jeyti fi'Kala that "a new day was coming to the Federation".

The Idealogues were stunned that they had lost so much ground. The Party's Central Committee immediately held sessions as soon as the results were ratified. They demanded that Miller explain why the Party had lost over fifteen percent of the Council to political enemies they had long thought subdued. Miller was at a loss to explain. The Committee thought the answer was obvious; under Miller the Idealogues had been promoting a new idea for Starfleet that contrasted with many views in the public of what Starfleet should be. Miller proved resistant to their pressure. She pointed out they still had undisputed control of the Council. The Social Progressives had made an astounding leap in power, yes, but obviously the candidates they had beaten were simply not that good and had failed to appeal to the masses. The Party still controlled the Government bureaucracy. Her comment to Party Clerk Jeytas Gathali upon his protest was reportedly, "Let the Progressives spit against the wind, we still have the Government". The Committee thus failed to rein in Miller.

Miller's control of the bureaucracy and Party rank and file was still intact. She quickly made clear the Party would not tolerate dissent among it's Council Representatives. They had a duty to keep building the Enlightened Society. The Social Progressives could not be allowed to divert this by playing the Party against itself. She gave concessions to the bureaucrats, responding to complains of "repressing oversight" by reducing the Secretariat of Living Standard's budget for internal affairs. This worsened the problems with corruption while linking corruption to Party loyalty. If a bureaucrat wanted to keep his position and be able to enjoy Party resources for the BLN, he had to be loyal, and he often was. The worsening corruption, in turn, ensured the overstating and wasting of Federation resources. BLN shortages were avoided by the use of reserves and by order increases when it was clear that consumption was too high for intake.
The last governmental body that Miller didn't have control of was the Supreme Court. Already they had defied her by overturning the Tolerance Act. They would soon be due to hear the cases of the shipping companies and shipbuilders trying to overturn the BLN Support Act. The Support Act was pivotal to the establishment of the Enlightened Society and could not be allowed to be repealedd. Unsure of what to do, Miller finally turned to her only advisor on sensitive matters, Revork tha'Jwish.
Revork knew Miller was no Jirvshk and would not stomach Jirvshk's likely solution; a purge of the Court backed by force with the FSF. He merely advised her to run a propaganda campaign against the shipping companies and to pressure the Court to honor public needs. Privately, he decided to go even further than Jirvshk had gone. Jirvshk had merely planned to remove the Court and dissolve it, declaring the Central Committee the highest arbiter of law in the Federation. Revork decided to kill them. He enlisted the aid of Mishkin and the Red Guards to do so.
On the 12th of March 2355, a terrorist attack was carried out against the Court during a private meeting to debate a case. Gunmen, with knowledge of security measures, busted past the FSF forces responsible for defending the Justices and shot them all. A red bandana, the sign of the Red Guards, was left, and through various channels in the government and press, Maria Sandoval declared their responsibility for the attacks, the "killing of the so-called Justices, defenders of the bourgeoisie and oppressors of the proletariat who sought to keep the races in the chains of capitalist kleptocracy". Miller did not know that Revork had been behind this and genuinely thought the Justices had been brutally murdered by the Red Guards on their own accord. She was horrified, as Revork though she would be, and vowed to do whatever it took to take the Red Guards out of action. To this end, she actually expanded the powers of the FSF and began proceedings to outlaw firearms. She also attended the funerals of the Justices and granted generous pensions to their relatives.

Nevertheless, Miller was probably relieved to have the situation resolved. The last obstacle to the Enlightened Society had been removed, though in a way she regretted. The Council was convened on March 14th and accepted Miller's candidates. All of them, save Yevara Garx of Trill, were Idealogues. Five months later, on August 29th, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the BLN Support Act by a margin of 9-2 (Justices Yevara and Keilxana Dethie of Betazed ruled against, Dethie probably by the request of the Party Committee to keep the ruling from looking too lop-sided). The shipbuilding companies and transport companies now suffered as the consumer industry of the Federation had long suffered. The government forced existing shipping companies to transport BLN goods are absurdly low prices and sometimes outright confiscated transports for dedicated BLN transport while shipbuilders were forced to build thousands of transports for BLN use. An obvious result was the rapid expansion of the NCC designation numbers in Starfleet; the expanded construction of government transports was performed under the Naval Construction Contract bureaucracy.
For the moment, the shipbuilding industry was safe. The government's massive orders meant that more construction slips had to be established so that government orders, which legally had to take priority, could be met while paying customers were also serviced. This became one of the few positive aspects of the BLN, as this expansion in shipbuilding capability would prove valuable in the Federation's rearmament after Wolf 359.

Miller's fall came in 2356. On the 10th of April, Starfleet Intelligence issued a warning that the Tsen'kethi Imperial Fleet was mobilizing. A Security Council meeting was convened. Revork gave the briefing and pointed out that the Tsen'kethi had been building up for eight years, after their initial raids on border colonies went unpunished. Security Council Chairman Germe Jilkva and Revork both urged Miller to reinforce the border regions. Miller refused on the grounds that the act would "provoke" the Tsen'kethi. There were, after all, other neighboring powers the Tsen'kethi might be targeting. The Cardassians, for instance, or the Talarian Steadhold. Despite objections from Starfleet and the Security Council, she refused to reinforce the border regions. Jilkva desperately appealed to the Party Central Committee, which urged her to at least make preparations, but Miller could not be swayed. In her mind, any action would be seen as aggressive and could provoke a war. It wasn't worth the risk.

On the 18th of April, the Tsen'kethi Imperium declared war on the Federation. The disputed Jilashan Worlds were overrun within three days of the declaration and every border sector was raided or invaded. Starfleet's present forces were forced out and a few dozen starships were lost - the worst Federation military disaster since Tomed.
By the 20th, Starfleet was issuing dire warnings of imminent collapse on the front. The Tsen'kethi may very well drive to slice off the Rimward sectors or perhaps a thrust toward the core sectors. They insisted that Miller release them to send in reinforcements and to begin restoring mothballed starships for the war. Miller outright refused. Obviously the Tsen'kethi had been provoked. Perhaps they could listen to reason. Perhaps they felt threatened by Federation power and were striking to protect their borders. When the local Starfleet commander, Admiral Rickover, requested permission to retaliate against targets in Tsen'kethi space to slow their advance, she sacked him - there was to be no aggressive acts to make the Tsen'kethi feel even more threatened.
To the Party, Miller's deranged insistance on strict adherence to Surakian ideals of non-violence had gone too far. She had been useful for placating the population in internal affairs but it was clearly time to bring back someone with iron. Otherwise the unofficial contract with the charter colonies - due payments for defense - would be jeopardized. The entire system would crash if the Federation failed to defend their colonies. Jeytas Gathali, the Betazoid Clerk of the Central Committee, went straight to the Federation Council. He had no standing there, but he was able to appeal to the Social Progressive representing Betazed, Iltaraxa Troi, to call him to speak. Miller was forced to watch as Gathali argued passionately for her removal. She was invited to defend herself by Salok of Vulcan, but her speech was unimaginative and mostly consisted of dire warnings that if the Council "gave in to the militarists", it would doom the Federation to war and downfall. The Council swept Miller out by a massive vote. She won only one out of ten votes, all from her supporters in the Party and the Vulcans' votes. Iltaraxa called on the Council to elect Gathali as President. He accepted and immediately restored Rickover, then ordered Starfleet to mobilize it's reserves and cease the Tsen'kethi advance.
Defeated in the Council, Miller appealed to the Central Committee to expel Gathali from it's ranks. Gathali had overstepped himself by not consulting the Committee - which he could not have done without tipping Miller off to his plan to unseat her. This was a violation of Party policy. Unknown to Miller, Gathali had already consulted with many of the Committee's members. They backed Gathali and removed Miller from the Party's Chair position. Gathali was elected to replace her, in line with Jirvshk's tradition.
Miller suffered a nervous breakdown at her removal, panicked by fears of escalating war leading to the destruction of the Federation. She tried to barricade herself in the Presidential office and had to be dragged out by security personnel. Her family had her admitted to a psychiatric facility. Miller recovered months later, with the war in full swing, and founded PAPAL - Progressive And Pacifist Action League. She authorized the group charter, calling interstellar war "an inherently racist or otherwise hateful act". PAPAL and other pacifist groups would soon become a political force within the Federation, noted mostly for snarling public traffic and other annoyances during vigorous anti-war, anti-Starfleet protests. Miller tried to argue to the public that the military expenditures of war and conflict would bring down the BLN System, the old "guns or butter" debate returned to life. She would have a greater effect in the early 60s than she was having at the moment.

Gathali's Presidency was the first moderate leadership since Jovark twenty years before. Gathali himself was somewhat of a Jirvshkite and maintained Party control of the bureaucracy. He was already closely connected with them. Jirvshk had appointed him as Party Clerk because of Gathali's Betazoid talents; he was able to sense and feel his subordinates' thoughts and emotions and thus could tell when they were being truthful and when they were lying. Oftentimes, as Clerk, he had unearthed some of the growing corruption through these abilities, but Jirvshk and Miller had never let him act on that knowledge. Jirvshk undoubtedly knew that the corruption would make patronage and Party membership valuable as it became inseperable from lush government jobs, while Miller was trying to keep the bureaucracy - and the rest of the Party rank and file - on her side so that the Central Committee would not be able to remove her.
Gathali tried to end the corruption. He instructed the Secretariat of Living Standards to look into the system, and the ten worst cases they found were brought up on charges. The bureaucracy's Party members protested to the Central Committee that Gathali was persecuting them. The Committee did not want the bureaucracy to be turned against the Government with a war on and forced Gathali to stop.
Starfleet's counterattack also had an unintended effect. It provoked a war with the Talarian Steadhold, which feared the massing of Starfleet forces on it's border was directed against the Steadhold instead of the Tsen'kethi flank. By fortune for both sides, the Talarian attack came too late to hit the Starfleet concentrations, who successfully counter-attacked the Tsen'kethi, but it did come down hard on the local colonies, including the Galen Colony, which suffered severe damage with entire settlements overrun and destroyed.

By late 2357, the war with the Talarians was over, while conflict with the Tsen'kethi continued as before. At this point, border raids from the Cardassians escaled. The Cardassian Central Command believed their moment was nigh. The Federation border colonies they desired, and which they had raided years before, were ripe for the taking, and the Federation had apparently proven weak. The Cardassians opened up their own war against the Federation starting with an offensive out of Bajor in March of 2358. Unlike the Talarians, they decided to declare war citing allegations of Federation support for Bajoran rebels - "terrorists" in Cardassian press releases - as provocation (this propaganda charge would be used by PAPAL to great effect in shaping public perception).
The Council Elections of 2358 saw the Idealogues slip a bit further. They were down to only about two-thirds of the Council Seats, with the Social Progressives claiming all of the rest save the five Vulcan-controlled seats. Gathali informed the Central Committee there was little to be worried about. Those defeated had all been Miller's people and it was obvious that this was in fact good for the Party, purging it of "Surakist" influence. Nevertheless there were problems. On the 2nd of August, Miller held a rally with PAPAL in San Francisco that virtually blockaded Starfleet Academy, demanding the government sue for peace. They even tried to win colonial support, claiming to the colonies that the militarists in Government were going to get them killed by the Tsen'kethi and the Cardassians for no reason.
Gathali's counter-charge was effective within the Party hierarchy, thought it failed to undermine PAPAL's growing numbers. Namely, that Miller was to blame for the crisis. She had naively undermined the Federation's defenses in the name of peace despite the fact that the Federation's neighbors coveted it's territory and were contemptuous of the notion of peace. Miller had nearly lost the alliance with the Klingons and had horribly weakened the Federation, according to Gathali. The charge had some effect on the populace in the first years of the wars, but when the two conflicts became quagmires PAPAL's propaganda (often backed by Cardassian propaganda) proved effective in turning public sentiment against the conflicts.

The Federation economy was already under enormous strain. Internal corruption meant that the BLN was in perpetual danger of inflicting shortages. There were growing cases of replicator shutdowns from lack of raw material. Miller and PAPAL latched upon the problems as more evidence that the Federation should make peace. Since the corruption in the system wasn't widely understood, most people assumed they were right and that the problem stemmed from the Federation's war efforts sucking away resources. They proved unwilling to endure reductions in the BLN. There mere rumor of a BLN reduction by the government - likely the work of PAPAL - caused planet-wide protests and rioting on Alpha Centauri. This served to confirm Cardassia's perception. The Federation's core was weak and without the stomach for a fight. Recovered records after the Dominion War indicated ambitious war plans up to a temporary occupation of Earth and the doubling of Cardassia's territory at the Federation's loss.

The press also helped with the notion that the wars were becoming a quagmire. They were filled with Miller's people due to the large number of propaganda projects she had carried out. They in turn had their supporters in the Party hierarchy, often nepotistic connections. Especially powerful were the "Young Paxist" faction of the Party and government. Youth, the sons and daughters of leading Party personnel, who had latched on to Miller's ideals and now refused to abandon them despite their apparent discrediting. From the beginning of the war, the Federation State Press tended to be anti-war and sometimes anti-Starfleet. The prevalance of Cardassian propaganda being accepted in the Federation is probably due to the News Service's willingness to publish their press releases uncritically as a part of a wider agenda to "save the Federation from itself," as anti-war writer Kayla Newton stated in a 2359 report on the MacGregor battle.
The wars and the Federation's growing economic woes went hand in hand. Gathali found that Turok and Miller had cut far too much muscle from Starfleet. It's ships were uniformly old, with only one out of ten vessels built within the decade and all by old designs. The first Nebula-class ships were still just coming off the assembly line and would be a decisive factor later. To deal with the problem now, Gathali asked for the Council to authorize increasing the budget for 2359. The Council refused, citing BLN commitments. The Central Committee even warned Gathali not to touch the BLN. The Party would lose too much.

Gathali went to the colonies. Those colonies who would be in the Cardassians' line of advance proved willing to raise emergency defense spending, more concerned now with violent alien invasion than giving cash to posh, pampered core worlders. Colonies elsewhere proved more resistant. Gathali in the end would only raise enough funds to build a third flight of frigates.
The 60s began with both wars in a stalemate. The Cardassian advance had been halted and was being steadily pushed back as they found themselves unable to bring enough firepower to bear against the Federation's larger, more powerful starships. They simultaneously had to deal with an escalation in the Klingon commitment to the Betreka Nebula. The Tsen'kethi and Federation continued to trade shots across their respective borders, which had finally been reclaimed. The growing stalemate had to be broken, in Gathali's view. Other alien empires were beginning to notice the Federation's weakness. If the Federation didn't knock out either power now it could face attack from multiple sides.
Gathali went back to the Council. Rearmament was now necessary; the Federation had to re-align it's priorities from the BLN to the military or risk being overrun. He brought with him indications of Tholian and Breen border movements that could mean imminent attacks in those regions as well. The Council now agreed to cut into the BLN for rearmament.
The Central Committee protested. They knew that the BLN was the one thing keeping them in power. If they abandoned it the Social Progressives might actually win the Council's majority. They demanded Gathali not touch the BLN. Gathali refused. The colonies could not be squeezed for any more dues, not until he had proven the Federation could and would defend them from attack. For the time being, the Federation citizenry would have to sacrifice a little to ensure they were safe. Rearmament was ordered to begin in 2361.

PAPAL leapt upon the issue with full force. Gathali was going to starve the core worlds to fight colonial wars. Millions would die for just a few parseces of space. Cardassia's propagandists threw their full force into the effort. The worlds they were attacking? Cardassian-claimed space that the Federation callously settled without consulting Cardassia. The Rape of Nova Savona and other Cardassian atrocities were outright lies or distortions by Cardassia's enemies. Gathali's found his own Press Service aiding the anti-war movement. When he sacked producers linked to it, protests erupted throughout the core worlds.

Rearmament would also prove difficult in of itself. The skilled labor and facilities for high-grade starship production were in private hands, and there were no laws allowing Gathali to enforce price controls on them. The Federation lacked the funds for the kind of full-scale buildup that Sulu had been able to threaten half a century before. Gathali's attempt to draft legislation doing so led to vicious protests from the defense contractors and from the anti-war movement. Analysts pointed out that the only way to afford rearmament would be to place BNA-style measures over the defense industries, including dozens of mining operations, shipbuilders, electronics companies. The sheer volume of necessary government bureaucracy would be impossible to staff properly, the stress on the government's transport systems would grow, and both would steal resources for the BLN system. Increased dues on the charter colonies would further damage their economies while the price controls for defense-related industries would cause entire portions of the private economy to crash and require government nationalization. Devaluation of the colonies' hard currency would increase from the need to issue even more Federation credits to pay for rearmament.

The Idealogue Party was now threatened with a split. Gathali rallied his supporters and the Social Progressives together. But the Central Committee could rally more. A vote of no confidence against Gathali, directed to be introduced by the Committee, was brought before the Council on the 29th of November 2361. Gathali tried to persuade the Council but failed. The Party could not abandon the BLN, the center of the Federation's system. Gathali was removed and his replacement was T'Kal of Vulcan.
T'Kal was on the Party Committee, one of the Vulcans who did not break with the Idealogues. Wiley and willing to manipulate, she had been Jirvshk's choice to rally anti-Turok sentiment amongst the Vulcans. Now she used that same power to manipulate the government. She did not touch the corruption like Gathali had tried, since logically the corruption of the bureaucracy was the incentive for the illogical to do the Party's will. She also thought it was illogical to oppose the powerful peace movement in Federation society. She immediately sought peace talks with the various powers. The Tsen'kethi proved most receptive, now growing leery of the Cardassian threat on their border. An armistice was agreed upon within two weeks. Peace negotiations began in February of 2361 and would produce an end to the war by te end of the year.
The Cardassians now had to deal with a war-tried Tsen'kethi fleet on their border and the ever-present threat that the Klingon Empire would attack Betreka Nebula again. The Nebula-class ships were also being used in the conflict against them and proved to be far too powerful for Cardassia to handle. Obviously they had miscalculated when they fhought Starfleet was old and rusted. The USS Galaxy's launch in June of 2361 was the final straw. After a failed offensive in the fall of 2361 to try and gain back some ground, Cardassia settled into the worlds she held and offered an armistice. T'Kal seized it willingly. The crisis had passed.
But the damage had been done. Many colonies now questioned the effectiveness of Starfleet protection. The anti-war protests showed a disturbing willingness among the core worlders to abandon the very same colonists who made their paradise possible if it required even a temporary sacrifice. The Klingons also found themselves questioning the worth of their alliance with the Federation, doubts that would be exploited by the Duras faction.

Miller declared a great victory for her ideals. Obviously she had been right. Once the Federation proved it was not going to attack it's neighbors, they were no longer afraid and willing to wage war. PAPAL threw several peace celebrations in honor of the armistice with Cardassia and their political proponents pushed for immediate peace talks.

What Miller and her people did their best to suppress were the coming stories of Cardassian atrocities. Thousands of Federation nationals and Starfleet personnel taken as POWs were returning with charges of brutal and indiscriminate Cardassian torture, wanton raping and killing of POWs and civilians, and even the failure to return some of the POWs. The charter colonies had several private production companies that funded documentaries and press specials that highlighted these allegations and the proof of it. T'Kal forced the Communications Secretariat to suppress the distribution of the material. It was obviously provocation by the militarists to continue the war by riling up public hostility. PAPAL went even further by charging the POWs were lying, often using Cardassian propaganda without constraint. The easy suppression of the evidence by the Government was a highlight of just how strong Federation control of it's communications network was, a factor in coming years (including the attempted Leyton coup).

With the wars over it seemed that the peace had been restored. T'Kal was free to concern herself with domestic difficulties. The declining production in the Core Worlds was the most odious to her. It was not logical that the core worlders gained the benefits of the system without working for them. As one of Jirvshk's appointees to the Central Committee, she had been in agreement with him on a number of issues. The need for firm rule was one.
But the Central Committee was too used to it's independence and newfound power. As the determiners of the Party line, they were the ones who had the control of the bureaucracy. They alone could approve new Party directives. They refused T'Kal's request to begin finding methods of making the core worlders work. It would be political suicide for the Party.

What was decided instead was another dues increase for the charter colonies, this time to a third of the colonies' GDP. It would be sold off as a measure to ensure their security. The Party was not above using the recent war to scare the colonies into obedience. But many did not accept the reasoning. Protests and a handful of riots broke out amongst the colonies. For the first time, in fact, some of the colonial governments' executive branches took to cooking the books as well, making their GDP seem lower than they really were. These colonies - Algrossa, Pacifica, Novvy Moskva, amongst others - would later be centers of rebellion when the Federation found strong evidence of the false reporting and acted upon it.

One way in which T'Kal dealt with declining production was by turning to the corrections system. Penal work colonies were set up and criminals who volunteered would be allowed to work for a small wage and better access to luxuries. This did better than expected and most criminals in the Federation preferred time in the penal colonies than actual jails. But it couldn't begin to make up for the growing numbers of dormant citizens in the core worlds. The BLN was becoming parastical to the point of threatening the Federation's system with collapse.

T'Kal realized this above all else. In a secret meeting of the Central Committee and her Cabinent, she told them straight up that the Federation was effectively a tyranny. A tyranny of the represented core worlds, who were voting unfair benefits for themselves that the non-represented colonies had to pay for. The Federation had become a two-track system; the core worlds were de facto command economies with the government controlling over ninety percent of the economy, while the colonies were struggling free markets that had a constant loss of capital from the dues. The only thing keeping the colonies in the Federation was that they preferred things as they were to the prospect of rule by Cardassia, Romulus, and other alien empires. The Central Committee was clearly uncomfortable with being referred to as tyrants, but most had to admit T'Kal was right. They used the threat of abandoning the colonies to alien attack to compel those colonies to contribute to an unfair system that didn't benefit them.
T'Kal's point was that so long as the Federation could point to Cardassia and other empires and say, "Would you rather be under us or under them?", the colonies would side with the Federation. The great risk to the Federation was not an alien aggressor, which only served to solidify the system, but a two-sided threat: that a viable alternative would be found to the system. This would either be in the guise of an external alternative presenting a model for emulation or internal necessity from the takeover of Federation government and society by "extreme pacifist" elements that would refuse to fight to defend the colonies. T'Kal used her points to argue for the suppression of PAPAL; they were a clear, logical threat to the Party and the Federation.
The Central Committee agreed with the spirit, but believed T'Kal wanted to go too far. Suppressing PAPAL openly and violently would turn them into martyrs. The people would vote them out of the Council. Miller might very well be encouraged to get her supporters in the Party to break away, which would lead to horrible instability in the system that might bring it all crashing down. Like it or not, PAPAL had to be left alone. A propaganda campaign to undermine Miller was ordered but proved unviable - too many members of the state press were sympathetic to PAPAL and T'Kal was unwilling to give too much access to the colonial press agencies.
The 2362 Council Elections were something of a draw all around. The Social Progressives held onto their seats and took a few from Miller's supporters, while the Idealogues saw a slight shift in favor of Miller's candidates. Again Miller and PAPAL believed it was a victory for their ideals. Trends showed that they mostly succeeded on the inner-most worlds, completely free of obvious military threat. Represented worlds in the border regions tended to vote for other Idealogues or the Social Progressives. T'Kal was kept on as President of the Council. The Central Committee now feared the growing power of Miller's faction. They asked T'Kal to bring Miller back into a position. T'Kal refused, knowing full well that the charter colonies would take it as a sign of betrayal.
In support of Miller, PAPAL staged a number of demonstrations in October of 2362, calling for T'Kal's removal and the restoration of Miller as President. T'Kal called in the FSF when a number of the demonstrations turned into riots. Dozens were injured in clashes across many inner core worlds (though not Earth, where PAPAL remained peaceful). The State Press ran the story with a clear anti-FSF slant and prompted public outrage at the organization. They stirred up memories of Jirvshk, saying the FSF was illegitimate and was only meant to be the private army of a single warmongering madman. It should not exist in the Enlightened Society. The Committee and the Council bowed to the pressure and together managed, successfully, to compel T'Kal to dissolve the FSF. She refolded back into Starfleet by merging it with Starfleet Security, but in the process she was forced to have all of their important military equipment destroyed. The Federation was without any organized, equipped ground force now.
The new player to the galactic stage at this time was the Ferengi Alliance. The Ferengi had and still have a reputation as ultra-capitalists, the ultimate exploiters, even if the Ferengi economy had as much controls upon it as the Federation did due to the endemic corruption and autocracy of the Grand Nagus and his regime. They were "into everything", according to a Secretariat of Trade report, buying and selling everywhere and literally creating an entirely new trade currency: gold-pressed latinum. The most important thing the Ferengi may have done was, ironically, artificially extend the lifetime of the Federation's private economy. Ferengi companies and brokers bought goods from the charter colonies - industrial technology, consumer goods, unique luxury items - and paid for it with gold-pressed latinum. In return they often sold throughout the Federation various items, consumer and otherwise, and acted as bankers and traders. The fresh influx of capital ended some of the stagnation setting in.
Even with the growing penal work colonies and the previous Miller-era propaganda attempts at getting the core worlders to return to work, production was still declining. In 2363 it was reported that the 2362 economic data showed production at an all-time low. The Federation GDP had declined by a fifth from what it was fifty years before. Earth's GDP was down by more than half what it had been in 2313, and some core worlds were down to a mere quarter of what they had before. Unemployment rates were through the roof. The system wasn't working, as had been clear for at least twenty years. But there were none in power who were willing to step forward and say it needed changing. To do so would be political suicide.

The data inspired an essay, Democracy Gone Wrong, by a Pacifican history professor and politician Samantha Morrison. Published in novelette form and on the comm systems in May of 2363, Morrison's conclusion was that the Federation was not run by the Idealogue Party but by the "Core Worlder Mob"; the voters of the core worlds who had Council representation and who used that to vote for the Idealogues, who would literally bribe the electorate with benefits - in this case, the BLN. The people did not question whether it was right that they had the system, or the system's worth; they wanted it and any who questioned it could not be allowed in office. Nor did they care that the charter colonies didn't have it, or that the colonies were paying most of the cost of the system now. They wanted their public housing and furnishing, their public education, and their plentiful stipend of credits. They would use their votes to keep it, no matter the price to the Federation.
Morrison's conclusion was shocking and horrifying. To end the stagnation, nothing less than the fall of the Federation would be necessary, and in such a way as to completely destroy the core worlds' infrastructure. Billions would have to die, both from attack and from post-attack starvation and lack of medical care, to actually end resistance to any changes in the system. Morrison was attacked by colleagues across the Federation for her theory, in many cases because it seemed unfathomable that the only way to end the system was to have so many people killed and entire worlds reduced to rubble. In the end, she proved more correct than any of her critics - perhaps even Morrison herself - believed.
PAPAL made it their personal crusade to attack Morrison, holding protests on her college and elsewhere, often attacking and destroying copies of her work on paper and electronic. Miller herself took part in one demonstration in which dozens of copies of the essay were burned. She denounced Morrison as elitist and a "fascist reactionary". The Party put pressure on Morrison's employer, the University of Monrovia, to fire her despite her tenure, and their members of Pacifica's government later tried to bar her from running for Congress. The violence of the reaction against Morrison made her work even more widely-read. Copies were spread everywhere. The essay was even translated into Klingonese (and later used as propaganda by the Duras faction) and Cardassian.
Morrison also inadvertantly called T'Kal's downfall. In a private interview for a high class Vulcan reading circle, T'Kal stated that Morrison's conclusions were "regrettable but irrefutably logical". The system Sirok had envisioned could only work with logical races, and the other races were inherently illogical in their cultures and attitudes. Though her interview went on to say she did not believe that collapse would be necessary to end the system's decay, the damage had been done. The sound-byte was stumbled upon by State Press people covering Vulcan and transmitted to the rest of the Federation. The Core Worlds erupted in rage at having their own President betray them in such a way. PAPAL denounced T'Kal and demanded her removal from the Presidency.
T'Kal was caused before the Central Committee. Her explaination to them was not acceptable, so T'Kal resigned her positions voluntarily. She would soon become an advocate of Vulcan secession from the Federation. Sympathizers of PAPAL called for the Committee to restore Miller. They were backed by bureaucrats who longed for the good old days under Miller, when nobody was watching them closely. But before the Committee could decide upon a replacement, the Council elected Iailmin Du'thurl of Bol.
Du'thurl was a compromise candidate in most respects. He did nothing of note during his Presidency, which was marked by a temporary end to production slide from the increased numbers of Ferengi orders from colonial industries. Other than that, the economy continued on as it had before.


Again, this was Phong's idea. If it's not supposed to be here, blame him.

While fictional, I liked Steve's idea on the 'fall of the Federation' between the TOS and TNG eras. I also thought that it would get more feedback here than on the Fanfic forum so I suggested he put it here. Any blame for that part goes on me, any other flames can be pointed towards Steve

This is a really interesting read. Looks like you gave this a lot of thought.

I read around half of that, and it wasn't bad, but now my eyes are half dead. Any chance of some extra spacing being added between paragraphs?

A PDF version is available here. Skip to Chapter 2; the rest is stuff for his crossover universe.

Nitpick: It's the University of California at Berkeley, and there is no conceivable reason that this would ever change.

To be fair, its been said that poverty, hunger, disease ect. have been eliminated in the Federation and that money isn't the driving force in people's lives, not that people don't have to work for a living. Otherwise such a state would end up pretty much as that fictional history describes it, having to squeeze places where people still do work to support those that don't and imploy the various political, social and military policies to keep the status quo. Something that flies in the face of the social justice obsession that Federation citizens all seem to have.

Great stuff, dare we ask more, more?

Burak Gazan wrote:Great stuff, dare we ask more, more?

Well, Phong posted a link to the .pdf for the larger fluff, but that's all I'm doing for the actual fucking up of the UFP in the 24th Century.

I'll add spaces to paragraphs now. I literally posted that as I was getting ready for work and didn't have time to fix it up.

SCVN 2812 wrote:To be fair, its been said that poverty, hunger, disease ect. have been eliminated in the Federation and that money isn't the driving force in people's lives, not that people don't have to work for a living. Otherwise such a state would end up pretty much as that fictional history describes it, having to squeeze places where people still do work to support those that don't and imploy the various political, social and military policies to keep the status quo. Something that flies in the face of the social justice obsession that Federation citizens all seem to have.

The only Federation citizens we see with a "social justice obsession" were Starfleet personnel, if you'll recall correctly.

Two, it's a convenient position for core worlders to take to explain their paradise. It doesn't mean they don't have to do some very unjust things to maintain it.





And Howedar, this was in the late 2200s. It's possible, I'd think, that if California University itself went belly-up they would rename the place to just "Berkeley".

Nice, a bit like the People's Republic of Haven in reverse.

Howedar wrote:Nitpick: It's the University of California at Berkeley, and there is no conceivable reason that this would ever change.

Remember, LA and a large chunk of SoCal will disappear into the ocean in the ST timeline. Millions will undoubtedly die in that event, and it's doubtful any UC campus from Santa Barbara southward will continue to exist, whether physically destroyed or abandoned in the demographic reshuffling. At that point, why continue calling it UC if all it does is remind everyone of the millions who died, especially if the UC system in all likelihood no longer formally exists?

Tradition. Honestly, I think the disappearance of a lot of SoCal (WTF, whose idea was that anyway?) would make Cal more likely to stick with UC Berkeley as a name.

Howedar wrote:Tradition. Honestly, I think the disappearance of a lot of SoCal (WTF, whose idea was that anyway?) would make Cal more likely to stick with UC Berkeley as a name.

Well, it could go either way.

As for letting SoCal sink, that idea was brought to you by the same Voyager visionaries (in the same episodes, even) who gave us the computer revolution being caused by a time travel accident... Need I say more?

Is this the continuation of Undiscovered Frontiers? I did like that story.

No, it isn't.

Interesting read with alot of thought put into it.

I like it. Wouldn't mind reading a bit more of it infact, may download the .pdf when I get home tomorrow....

Steve wrote:
The only Federation citizens we see with a "social justice obsession" were Starfleet personnel, if you'll recall correctly.

Two, it's a convenient position for core worlders to take to explain their paradise. It doesn't mean they don't have to do some very unjust things to maintain it.

Different outlooks, different interpretations. To me these witch hunts and outright inventions of seedy underbellies to Federation politics seem like an attempt to justify rooting for the Empire when 'because the bad guys are 99% of the time, much cooler than the good guy' would be more than adequete.

fascinating.

heres hoping its made canon

SCVN 2812 wrote: Different outlooks, different interpretations. To me these witch hunts and outright inventions of seedy underbellies to Federation politics seem like an attempt to justify rooting for the Empire when 'because the bad guys are 99% of the time, much cooler than the good guy' would be more than adequete.

That would require me wanting to root for the Empire (the Star Wars Empire I'm assuming), when in truth I'd much rather live in the Federation because the Empire fucking sucks and I fucking hate their God damned asses, and above all else I have grown to despise the mindless Warsie fanboy clique that worships the Empire because they have teh ub4r weapons without realizing just what scumfuckers Palpatine and the Empire's leadership were (not to be confused with the intelligent Warsie clique who prefer semi-competent autocracy to completely incompetent anarchy, since the former at least keeps things like, say, a Vong invasion at bay).

Way to totally miss the point of Steve's story, SCVN. Nothing he wrote indicates that he likes the idea of all this happening to the Federation. It's just his idea of how they turned into what they clearly turned into. I don't know where the idea of this justifying the Empire came from, when it portrays the Federation as being capable of equal depravity. Why is it so inconceivable to you that the Federation could have an ugly side? Do you really buy the idea that the Federation is some kind of mortal paradise, despite no evidence that its people are any different than us?

Read the whole thing. Kept comparing it to People's Republic of Haven during the whole story.

Very good job.

CDiehl wrote:Way to totally miss the point of Steve's story, SCVN. Nothing he wrote indicates that he likes the idea of all this happening to the Federation. It's just his idea of how they turned into what they clearly turned into. I don't know where the idea of this justifying the Empire came from, when it portrays the Federation as being capable of equal depravity. Why is it so inconceivable to you that the Federation could have an ugly side? Do you really buy the idea that the Federation is some kind of mortal paradise, despite no evidence that its people are any different than us?

For a while a lot of people were trying to think of any reason possible to close the gap between the Federation and the Empire in terms of evil. I think they were having some issues rooting for the bad guys.

They know that the Federation isn't evil in the sense that "we'll blow your planet up" so they had to attack other aspects like police state, rehabilitation camps, misinformation, etc. Sometimes it was almost like they were trying to make the UFP the North Korea of science fiction.

I have to admit I thought the same thing when I first saw this thread but after reading the entire thing it is a rather well thought out article and I enjoyed it.

I found that to be extremely well-written and highly adept at explaining some of the things we saw in TNG.

So, would Picard be a through-and-through Idealogue? It might be interesting to see where some of the TNG+ characters fit on the political spectrum described here.