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Origins: Star Trek, Star Wars, and U.S. power

• The USS Enterprise CVN-65, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, inspired the USS Enterprise NCC-1701; Roddenberry originally called his starship Yorktown, and Star Trek's naval structure became an idealized image of the U.S. Navy.
• NBC rejected the first pilot as too cerebral but commissioned Star Trek because its command structure felt relatable to the U.S. Navy; the earlier video "Star Trek is propaganda" supplies the full case for reading the Federation as an idealized U.S. naval superpower. [1]
• Vietnam shattered that ideal. George Lucas directly tied Star Wars to Vietnam and the Viet Cong: the advanced technological empire loses to low-tech rebels, while Enterprise launching combat sorties is the real-world counterpart to a Star Destroyer projecting force without permission. [2]

The American mythos

• Every era has a mythos: stories such as the Olympians, the Ramayana, and Romulus and Remus tell a civilization where it comes from and shape what it becomes.
• The U.S. has spent its short history manufacturing such stories through the Old West, the Founding Fathers, advertising, schools, and mass culture.
• Francis Bellamy's 1892 Pledge of Allegiance grew out of a campaign to sell flags to schools; its original straight-arm salute was replaced by the hand-over-heart practice in 1942.
• Hollywood's capitalist competition produced the conjoined mythos of "Star Trek Wars," built around postwar America's central question: how should a superpower use its power?
• Star Trek is America's highest self-image: liberal democratic power making alliances, rebuilding enemies into friends, and using science and technology to raise up the wider world without domination.
• Star Wars is the dark image of the same power: America as an empire with superweapons, vassals, coercion, and overwhelming force.
• Together they form an American culture divided over whether America is the Federation or the Empire.

Why the mythos died

• By 2026, with Star Trek at 60 and Star Wars approaching 50, "Star Trek Wars" is a dead mythos because the American power it was built to interpret is itself dying.
• Feral Historian's 60th-anniversary reflection prompted this essay; despite coming from opposing political directions, both channels now sit outside the liberal center and critique the same exhausted myths.
• The dissident right and radical left are gaining traction for the same reason: the liberal-center myths no longer correspond to the material order they were built around.
• The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine embodied the institutional confidence of Pax Americana, while the Star Wars prequels explored a decadent republic rotting into dictatorship through emergency powers in the War on Terror and Patriot Act era.
• The death began in the 2000s, but J.J. Abrams did not personally kill it, and neither did "woke": Star Trek and Star Wars were always diverse, political, and full of empowered women.
• Corporate capitalism is the more attractive culprit: Disney bought Star Wars as exploitable franchise property, while Star Trek passed through Viacom and then into the Paramount-Skydance empire controlled by David Ellison and backed by Larry Ellison.
• That ownership now places Star Trek under billionaires who will not permit the franchise to attack certain U.S.-supported political travesties with the freedom it once used to attack Vietnam or Afghanistan.
• Andor does not save Star Wars; it shows why Disney's factory model is failing. The earlier "Andor : a Marxist story" identified the politics, and Tony Gilroy demonstrates that art is made by artists without corporate content systems. [3]
• Capitalism alone cannot be the killer because both franchises were born from corporate profit-seeking in the first place.

The collapse of U.S. power

• America itself is the killer: "Star Trek Wars" was America working through what to do with overwhelming power, and it was not equipped to handle the collapse of that power.
• The military symptoms are aircraft carriers becoming obsolete and Patriot interceptors costing roughly 200 times the drones they destroy; the deeper reality is that America is about 4% of world population and 15% of global GDP, with that share falling.
• America is neither Federation nor Empire. Its power was never destined; it was contingent on geography, historical fortune, and ruthless choices, and those contingencies are fading.
• Faced with decline, America has chosen the darker myth and is making a last attempt to become the evil empire: MAGA embraces imperial aesthetics, domestic stormtroopers, and the possibility of catastrophic nuclear escalation.

The choice that remains

• All national myths are lies and propaganda to some degree, but they are also visions that orient decisions toward futures that do not yet exist.
• The Empire leads only to the dark side; the Federation's strength was never its starships but the Prime Directive, restraint from imposing itself by force, and cooperation.
• The Federation was always America's best destiny: not a guaranteed destiny, but one that can still be chosen and built.

References

1. [00:59] Star Trek is propaganda — :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}
2. [01:45] George Lucas Reveals How Star Wars Was Influenced By the Vietnam War — :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}
3. [11:38] Andor : a Marxist story — :contentReference[oaicite:2]{index=2}