I never had any political conscience whatsoever.Which was strange, after having vibrated with every chapter of Oriana Fallaci’s “Interview with History” at the age of 12. But when I was 18, and allowed to vote, I never had my mind clear enough to make the cross on the piece of paper. Nor to define myself politically.

The figures that impressed me so much in my childhood are dead, and their motives seem blurry in today’s chaos. So, after years of dissapointment, a just remembered the feeling of admiration and expectations I had felt going through those historiacl characters, when I saw the first episode of Star Trek’s “Voyager”. Not only they start with a question about discrimination, that has a dark and twisted answer: the ferengis are what they are. More politically correct than this is the captain, a strong woman who reminded me of Golda Meir on that classic interview with the Italian journalist. She speaks like a mother, and yet she is a captain. She misses her husband, but her ship comes first. And she has postponed maternity, giving the place of a baby to her dog. Unlike Picard, Captain Janeway has a life besides the ship; a life that comes in present, and not like a french memory. But like Picard, she’s first a captain, and then a woman.

But what impressed me more is not her determination to get the members of the crew back, but how, based on her power, she feels guilt, and you can understand that responsibility and guilt come together like horse and carriage. And then we find that the Caretaker isn’t but another guilty entity, who has under “his” charge a population of immature civilians who aren’t able to think by themselves. The Caretaker has been in History so many times, and I think again of Oriana Fallaci’s interviews. About the Imperialist countries that left nothing but war and unreal patterns and then have showed some doubtful pity on them. About the civil wars, the boarders, the nuclear accidents.

A Caretaker v/s a Captain. The Caretaker is the overprotective parent who never allowed anything and now deals with a disaster. With a junkie, with a girl interrupted. With a generation of damaged people who have become infants when it comes to political life. And the captain is the loving mother. The leader who’ll do anything to get her crew back safe to the ship, and will put herself second and third. What I still haven’t seen in real life , and reason why I haven’t made the decision of drawing that line on the paper.