I'm a blog not a doctor

So the Maquis are sort of selfish, belligerent assholes to begin with. Their entire deal is "we expected the Federation to prosecute a war with Cardassia to complete victory no matter the cost; FUCK your peace treaty and FUCK your border clarification. We're going to deliberately attempt to reignite hostilities in order to get our stolen land back."

It's not a very sympathetic movement except in one respect; "we don't want to live under the fascist boot of the Cardassian Union" is an understandable motivation, something you can easily see men killing, and dying, for. You understand why they're doing what they're doing and to an extent you can root for them a little bit, because who the hell likes the Cardassians?

But then you get Eddington, and with Eddington you get a portrait of a man who hasn't found a reason; he's found an excuse.

Because Eddington is himself a product of the decadence he claims to decry.

Eddington needs the validation of being a righteous, hunted fugitive, persecuted for his ideology by the corrupt, decadent Federation. Because Eddington is dissatisfied with peace, with plenty, with the basic functioning of the Federation as the utopian future it is presented as. The slow boring of hard diplomatic boards seems feckless and weak to him, what people without a strong moral compass do. Eddington wants the galaxy to be on fire so he can hurl himself into that conflagration with reckless abandon, proving he's right.

This is only a mindset that can grow up among people who have never known the turmoil of actually unsettled times, the sort of man who thinks "hard times make strong men, strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times" is a trenchant political insight. Of someone who wishes they had been born to fight in WWII or Vietnam because they haven't had a chance to "prove" themselves like the generations that fought those wars did.

I absolutely guarantee you that "core" Maquis, people who didn't defect after a long Starfleet career but the actual colonists who are having to deal with Cardassia, do not have well-developed dorm-room bullshit philosophy about how the Federation is a weak, decadent state that has lost its way because of replicators, and isn't it so much better and nobler and purer to eat food you've grown yourself instead of re-sequenced protein molecules. Those guys are going to be concentrating on things like getting weapons to blow up Cardassians with. They are going to regard the position that the food they're scavenging is somehow better than replicated food as weird; they would love to have some replicators.

Eddington also gives off a strong whiff of not liking Starfleet because its overly cosmopolitan. It's the part of the Federation where all its different member species have to come together and get along, and so their unique differences do end up sort of sandblasted off at the edges in order for there to be a common Starfleet culture.

Eddington's career was stalled out at mid-rank. He was never going to get a command, never going to be put in charge of anything too special or exciting. Even on DS9 he's playing second fiddle to Odo, for all that they're nominally on the same level. His future options were to retire and do something else, or accept that he's going to spend the rest of his life being the guy who puts other people's plans into effect. Some Starfleet officers take incredible pride in being those guys - that's the essence of O'Brien, for example. For Eddington it's a burning insult, and I truly believe that all his criticism of the Federation only came into existence once he started looking for a reason why they, not he, are the ones who suck.

Fill yer boots, pals.

Me: I mean depends on your tolerance for this type of racism, but like I said it's my favourite show, it def has some great parts if you're up for it.

Them: Oh so it's not racist.

Me: It absolutely is.

Them: So you're saying racism is ok??