Book banning

[Spongebob]

See, this is exactly what I mean.

Despite your peace-loving nature, the show has got you to argue that there are right reasons for starting a war, and that disobedience, while unfortunate, was good in the long run. And this reinforces the cliches, like it or not. "We're Americans, so of course we hate war, but we always seem to end up fighting them, which is good."

No, I wasn't arguing that.  I was hoping Capt. Georgiou would realize Burnham was right and agree to her approach.  The idea was to attack them and thus gain their respect and maybe they back off (this was what Sarek told Burnham), sort of the same thing we tell kids who are being bullied.  They weren't likely to destroy the much more powerful Klingon ship but the Klingons were going to destroy the Federation ship otherwise.  Understand, violence was going to happen no matter what.  The Klingons were just not interested in peaceful negotiations.  

A more challenging, cliche-breaking show would depict them avoiding war through negotiation. Or it would show the main character overcoming her own desires, being obedient, and having that be the best course of action. But no one would watch such a show -- it wouldn't sell.

If you watched the entire episode, you would know that the Kingons had absolutely no interest in negotiations.  Their leader, T'kuvma, ranted about the Federation corrupting Klingon culture and rejected any possibility of peace.  This appears to be an allegory to groups like ISIS or Al Qaeda, who also have no interest in peace.  Unfortunately, there are cases where negotiation just won't work.  There really are no win situations in life.  And anyway, if the two captains had negotiated and flew off peacefully, that would have been the end of the show.  You have to have some sort of conflict for a TV show to work.

The small town my brother used to live in is among the worst in the world for Covid infections. The mayor finally put in place a not-very-strong mask mandate, and within 24 hours she had so many death threats that she had to resign. Obedience has become such a dirty word for Americans that it's hard for us to conceive of it being portrayed positively. Each person who phoned in a death threat felt he was the hero of his own "mutiny-is-justified" drama.

OK, let me get one thing perfectly straight.  I never suggested Burnham should have committed mutiny, nor did I say I supported that decision.  And I hope you don't think I would approve of those idiots threatening that mayor.  My position on those sort of people is that they don't give a crap about America or their fellow Americans.  They are exactly the thing they always complain about; they're just too stupid to realize it.  Nevertheless, I don't see any correlation between Discovery and that town's idiotic inhabitants.  You're trying to make an analogy between two things that just don't have any relation.  And, if you continued to watch the series, you would see that the show did not contrive moral justification for Burnham's actions.  She was prosecuted for it and remorseful.  You can't really judge an entire show by one episode.

Anyway, this is an interesting conversation, but it's way off topic for this thread so I'll let it go at this point.