Calling Capt. Kirk

I recall an episode of the original "Star Trek" television series in which a superaffluent alien society lived in the clouds (or somesuch) while the underclass toiled in filthy, ultra-substandard living conditions on the planet below for the benefit of those above. Capt. Kirk, of course, enlightened the überprivileged and both societal classes became destined to live happily thereafter.

Turns out, the episode — filmed in the 1960s, which is to say, about a decade before Lord Reagan descended while gripping piss-trickled-down economics — wasn't fiction and the planet wasn't somewhere no man had gone before; it was prehistory Earth. Still fictional on this here third rock, however, is atmospheric enlightenment induced by a principled leader.

"[This] world's leading billionaires as of March 2025, based on net worth"

"Number of billionaires worldwide in 2023, by region"

These are but the scattered cream of Earth's fetid crop of the 0.01% richest —

more than a half-million in number — as of 2021 — to say nothing of the 1%, 5% or 10%, or even the fortunate 20%.

There is no rational, or to be Vulcan about it, no logical, reason why nearly half of all Earthlings must struggle in severely impoverished or "merely" impoverished conditions, a percentage unchanged since — guess when? — roughly Reagan's exit date, by which time his fiscal proclivity to further benefit the already quite comfortable and superaffluent had undergone the contagious advent of global imitation.

Given other statistical probabilities played out, one is this: Virtually certain is that the universe houses extraterrestrials of conduct far more enlightened and thus more civilized — rarified, yet wholesale — than ours. Not at all uncertain is how this came to be. Everyone was content, indeed happy, that way; the old, primitive way having become a mindful relic of the extraterrestrials' middle-school history classes.

As I write from our little galactic outpost, the U.S. Senate is voting — really tough question here — on whether to exacerbate this nation's benightedness of reigning blockheaded leadership and thereby further coarsen the lives of millions. Some in the upper chamber's majority have expressed resistance to this legislated, mean-spirited foolishness, but their personal history is one of blockheaded collaboration. Hence we hang in doubt.

Also doubtful in execution but nevertheless cheerful and rather charming is that this world's heftiest superaffluent human and "the country’s biggest Republican donor called on Monday for the formation of a new political party and suggested he would back primary challengers against nearly every single Republican in Congress."

Notwithstanding Mr. Musk's self-conflicting (and likely impermanent) stance of establishing a third party while simultaneously meddling in major-party primaries, his proposition, enacted, could shave those critically narrow, general-election winning points from the Evil Empire's column. Musk's $328.5 billion or thereabouts could render as pocket change the $300 million he spent last year on propping it up and next year, upon it, rain down electoral desolation.

Which is only good thing I can say about one man possessing the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary to worm one's way into the highest reaches of American government and then deprive nearly half the world of its indispenable aid. That Musk opposes the Bigass Ugliest Bill Ever on domestic grounds and for all the wrong reasons is another story altogether.

I believe I'll give a call to Captain James T. Kirk.