"Again and again on the series, we see that communication is the solution to problems, and that understanding your enemy (if they even are an enemy) is the only way to resolve a dangerous situation. It's a concept that seems to belie every piece of Cold War doctrine foisted on the American public. The Red Menace was a danger so insidious, so malignant, that even trying to understand its beliefs and systems meant a form of surrender. This wasn't just a physical force, but a kind of philosophical brain snatcher whose tendrils, if left unchecked, would lay waste to the free world. That kind of paranoid faith in the untouchable—the assumption that some beliefs must be walled away in silence and fear—was something that Star Trek stood against in stark opposition."