FREEDOM 'R' US:
BUSH'S RHETORIC AND THE OMEGA GLORY CONNECTION
Listening to soundbytes of Bush, I have noticed that whenever the “President” invokes a bogeyman or all the bogeymen in aggregate, one thing he almost always says, as he did in his speech at Marian College, is “They hate freedom.” I don’t know whether one of his speechwriters came up with this or not, but Dubya seems to be fond of the phrase. He delivers the line with breathless sincerity always with a pregnant pause after, and he tends to repeat it.
This bothers me whenever I hear it, partly because of the simpleminded metaphor, “Freedom-R-US,” but it also reminds me of something I couldn’t quite recall. Until now. Bush’s use of the word freedom reminds of the old Star Trek episode, The Omega Glory.
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to one of those doppelganger Earths they are always visiting. A Star Fleet Captain has gone renegade, and is breaking the prime directive taking sides in brush war. The “Yangs” and the “Kohms” (Yankees and Communists, get it? We were still fighting the Cold War back in the Sixties.) are the remnants of two cultures that battled each other almost to the death using biological weapons. The Yangs have been knocked back to the Stone Age. The Kohms appear to have an agricultural economy. The two sides are still fighting each other, albeit with primitive weapons. The Star Fleet renegade has thrown in with the Kohms.
 
I’m not going lay out the entire plot of this episode, but the dynamic trio are imprisoned by the Kohms, and Spock and Kirk are forced to share a cell a pair of seemingly vicious and animalistic Yangs. They are of course trying to escape, and whilst trying to pry off a loose bar in the window, Kirk lets slip the magic word, freedom. The large muscular Yang repeats the word in a deep basso profundo voice:
“Free-dom?”
”Freedom? That is a worship word. Yang worship. You will not speak it.”
Kirk says, “It is ...our worship word, too.”
With the Yang’s help, they all escape.
Cut to the chase: Yangs vanquish the Kohms in battle (off stage, not in the budget y’know.) and capture the Kohm village.
The large, muscular Yang reappears, and turns out to be the leader of the Yangs. He says:
“I am Cloud William ...chief. Also son of chief. Guardian of the holies, speaker of the holy words, leader of warriors. Many have died, but this is the last of the Kohm places. What is ours ...is ours again.”
Then one of the Yang savages brings in a tattered American flag, and all the Yangs reverently salute it. Cloud William begins to recite the holy words: “Aypledgli ianectu flaggen ...tupep kile for stahn ...” Kirk realizes this is a garbled version of the Pledge of Allegiance, and finishes it for the Yang.
“and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Yang elder: “He spoke the holy word.”
Cloud William: “You know many of our high-worship words. How?”
Kirk: “In my land we have a tribe like you.”
Cloud William: “Where is your tribe?”
Kirk: “Up there. One of those points of light that you see at night. “
Skipping a page or two in the script, a bit later in the scene, Cloud William says:
“Chiefs and sons of chiefs may speak the words, but the evil one's tongue would surely turn to fire. I will begin ...and you shall finish. Ee'dplebnista norkohn forkohn perfectunun.”
Flip another page. Kirk finally remembers, and admonishes the Yangs with a little speech, declaimed by William Shatner in his classic style, over doing it with brio:
”Hear this! Among my people, we carry many such words as this from many lands, many worlds. Many are equally good and are as well respected, but wherever we have gone, no words have said this thing of importance ...in quite this way. Look at these three words written larger than the rest with a special pride never written before or since –Tall words proudly saying ... "We the people". That which you called Ee'd Plebnista was not written for chiefs or kings or warriors or the rich and powerful, but for all the people! …you have slurred the meaning of the words "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity...do ordain and establish this constitution".
These words and the words that follow were not written only for the Yang— but for the Kohms as well! –
 
Cloud William: “The Kohms?”
They must apply to everyone or they mean nothing! Do you understand?
Cloud William is thinking really hard, and it obviously hurts:
“I do not fully understand, one named Kirk. But the holy words will be obeyed. I swear it.”
Kirk replies: “Liberty and freedom have to be more than just words.” Turning to Spock and McCoy he says:
“Gentlemen, the fighting is over here. I suggest we leave them to discover their history ...and their liberty.”
9:13:22 PM 
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