I've lived a long time, and there is a lot more living I have, hopefully. In my lifetime so far I have gone from waiting for a phone call at home on a rotary dial telephone to not knowing if I would get a call on my portable computer, desktop computer or handheld computer. Watching old Star Trek episodes where Kirk was on the Enterprise, making notes on the portable notepad or holding the orange square computer disks not only now is science fact but old science fact. We're in The Next Generation age. We play virtual war with people on a network, connecting hundreds and thousands around the world. We use data sticks to hold information, just like isolinear chips. We have data pads that connect us to the Internet, giving us access to world information.

With all this technology, we forget another, disturbing aspect of Star Trek we have slowly become a part of. Think about this, if you weren't with Star Fleet, what do you do? Well, you could be a writer, a holo-novelist possibly. Could you start your own business, I mean a business that didn't have dealings with Star Fleet. In a few episodes were I can remember people with jobs outside of Star Fleet, Julian Bashir's father is one example I can think of, he was thought of as a crackpot, as a dreamer. In a turn about for the happy lore of Star Trek Julian actually resented his father because he didn't have a steady job like he did with Star Fleet. I remember another episode where Picard thought he had a son and the son didn't want to enter Star Fleet, which disappointed the Captain. Even Picard's brother, who grew grapes for wine, was portrayed as a bitter man because he had to stay at the farm while his brother jaunted around the galaxy.

Star Trek presents the Federation as a near perfect society, as long as you follow the rules of the all mighty Federation. Defy them, refuse to follow the rules, and your life is worth nothing.

Thankfully we can still try to carve out an old fashioned American dream for ourselves, but we have to answer to the corporations. We have people who will continue to put their energies in fighting the government, who will continue to see conspiracies on a government scale, but the real enemy isn't the government but the corporations who with money and power control not only the government but us. You could have a main business district with a variety of shops and a diversified workforce of a couple of hundred people. Businesses interact and sustain each other. At some point a box store will come in. They want land and lower taxes to come in, claiming they will be a boom to the community. After throwing money around at some politicians, minds are 'changed' and the box shop comes in. Sure, they may give a few token dollars to community groups, just to keep the good will of the people, but the box shop corporate folks are hundreds if not thousands of miles away. Decisions are made by global forecasts and data charts. Unlike a Shakespeare character, the CEO isn't going to walk among the citizens of the town to get sense of what they want.

People get mad, wondering who can help them. They look to politicians and when they are caught either in the pocket of the corporations or found difficult to effect change because of the strangle hold of the corporations, people lash out at the politicians because they are the public face of a problem they don't see a solution to. Fighting a politician who has a face is easy. Defying a soulless corporation is hard because you will have many people fighting against you.

For years we have been maneuvered in a complicated chess match by corporations. Avenues of help have been cut off, rules have been changed and even our thinking has been altered. My parents remember a time when you get a job with a company and probably when you were ready to retire you were at the same job. If you became unemployed during your working years, getting another job wasn't hard. The reason for that is a little complicated, but in some old movies I've watched, set in the 50s and 60s, there was always an uncle or friend who had a shop for someone to work at. There was a local factory that might have some work. Companies weren't so interconnected, it seemed, so to move to an area was a fresh start, or at worse if you lost a job, you had options without forecast sheets and data research were you could find someone needing work.

Those times are over. When I lost a job in the 90s, out of work for the first time in my life, it took me two months to talk to a friend who was working at a place that was hiring. Before that, I had jobs that lasted over seven years. Since the 90s I haven't had a job lasting more than three years. What's worse is as I get older I find it hard to get a job. The current job I'm on I was out of work for almost a year. I had to make hard decisions, make drastic cuts. Now that I have this job, it has been harder for me to rock the boat. The economic fear has almost paralyzed me. I say almost because I can't live by the Federation rules. I remember what it was like in the past and I know what has caused the despair we have now.

I read articles and I worry about losing a job again. My income, compared to inflation, has been lowered greatly. I feel depressed when I see McDonalds having a national job fair trying to fill under 60000 positions and a million people apply in one day for a job with them. People from all walks of life trying to get a job that gives them some dignity, even though the pay is awful for a family. In the back of our minds, those of us with jobs are worried about losing them, becoming the person willing to work at McDonalds to make ends meet.

Unfortunately having pride in work, being proud of your job, is becoming a causality of the Federation. A lot of us have switched to survival mode. We don't want to rock the boat because it could effect our job. We don't want to be the whistle blower, because if we do it could cost us economically. Look at what happened in the Gulf last year. There was the huge oil spill, we knew the enemy was the corporation, but you have a lot of people who are wasting energy attacking the politicians. Yes, they should be held accountable but the rules set up for the corporations to get by with limited safety issues is not something that happened yesterday or even months ago. This has gone on for decades, through campaign contributions, slick ads and other manipulations. Politicians bear responsibility, but it's like going after the guy selling the drugs and not the supplier. Both have to be hit but if you cut off the supply the seller has nothing to sell. That is a tall order to take on.