while i'm riled up about it it is Fascinating to me the way that klingons are intentionally depicted as less advanced than humanity both technologically and culturally bc of their "warlike nature", creating an Other through which 24th century humans can define themselves as superior in relation to in a direct parallel to how 19th century anthropology helped white europeans define themselves as "more evolved" by depicting indigenous (especially african) populations as living fossils of earlier stages of evolution. by locating the Other as unevolved or a relic of the past you create a comforting fiction in which You are above such things (as war, as conquering, as everything klingons do that humanity wants to distance itself from) and its effective enough rhetoric that i've had trekkies in my replies telling me the klingons are like that bc they "never advanced past their medieval age"
