This is exactly the kind of thing that used to happen in mining towns. Then they decided having unions was a better idea than an angry mob murdering the boss man, raping his wife, and burning his mansion to the ground. Same with factory workers in unsafe conditions. Same with a ton of other jobs. That worked well for the middle class. The working class. That’s the “America” Trump is trying to re-imagine by making America great again. Problem is, the Republican Party since before Reagan has been destroying these basic tenets of fairness and equality generations had worked so hard for, undermining the civil rights movement through propaganda, creating what we would now call class traitors.

We could've been the Federation, but a few greedy assholes hired thughs to gain control of the machines and turned us into the Ferengi.

We still could.

That’s pretty much the premise to “the Dawn of Everything”: what was there before? Were there other options? Yes, there were

Like some sort of king?

"all"?