BlackGeekdom Science-Fiction from a Different Perspective

With Barack Obama’s recent victory in North Carolina, and his virtual tie in Indiana’s primary, it is time for me to get off the fence.  Having traveled back in time to the era in which the Star Trek television set of series aired, which is a remarkably frequent occurrence given the impracticality of time travel, I, Lieutenant Worf, from television’s Star Trek-The Next Generation and Star Trek-Deep Space Nine, am now ready to declare who I support in the 2008 Presidential Campaign.  I announce today my endorsement for Senator Barack Obama (D.-Ill.) and urge you to vote for him in the fall.

 
You may ask what about Senator Obama speaks to me, and causes me to endorse at this time.  Is it biography?  Surely, I am moved by the story of his humble origins, his absent Kenyan father, his mother working to make ends meet, and growing up without his father in an environment where his racial identity was unclear.  After all, I, Lieutenant Worf, am a Klingon by birth, but raised by Caucasian humans, the Rozhenkos, on the farm world of Gault.  So I know a little bit about absent fathers, and being a dark-skinned man, looked upon as an alien in a white world. 
 
It was clear when Obama became the first African-American President of the Harvard Law Review that he might be someone special.  This is much as it was for me.  While undergoing the Rite of MajQua in the lava caves of No’Mat, the vision of the original Klingon warrior Kahless appeared to me, prophesying that I would do what no other Klingon had done.  Obama’s time at Harvard showed his potential for leadership and bridge building, not unlike mine at Starfleet Academy.  People trash the graduates of such “elite” programs, but my time at Starfleet has served me well, and taught me about other species and their cultures.  I believe that a President Obama would capably lead an increasingly diverse America, though you will not have need for his innate ability to connect with alien species, since your world will not know warpdrive until the late 21st Century.
 
Speaking of diversity, you may have noticed that in Starfleet, Caucasian humans are still in charge of most spaceships, for no evident reason.  Yet just as twenty-fourth century humans began to move beyond that narrowness by placing Captain Benjamin Sisko in charge of Deep Space Nine, and Captain Elizabeth Janeway in command of Voyager, so are you finally learning in your primitive century that women and nonCaucasians can rule your societies.  Good for you.
 
People have attacked the depth of Obama’s grasp of economics, and also his religiosity as a Christian.  I’ve heard that tune before.  People said I didn’t understand the Ferengi rules of acquisition, but I proved time and again that I do.  And while my friends have thought me secular, well, I have a healthy respect for Bajoran beliefs concerning their prophets.  Given our deep personal connections, I think the critiques of him hold no more water.
 
But there is more that I see in him.  Just as the transcendental challenge of your time is Moslem extremism, so in my future it was the Borg.  The Borg are as alien to us as bin Laden is to you.  And if I, a Klingon by birth raised by Russian farmers, can command the Defiant in Admiral Hayes’ fleet against the Second Borg invasion and fight off the Borg’s would-be temporal sabotage, then I think Obama, with whom I have so much in common, can lead the fight against Islamofascism to a successful conclusion.
 
In conclusion, I urge you to vote for Senator Barack Obama.  And since I’m from the future, and know the outcome, I’ll be putting fifty thousand of your dollars on his winning, and taking “the over” at Vegas on the proposition that he will this year attain 51% of the popular vote in the American election.  So please remember, g’hay’cha (”Damn it”!), vote for President Obama.  I mean, Senator Obama, forgot the Stardate, sorry.