Today is June 7, 2020. I wrote this review in February of 2019. While it was relevant THEN, it is even more relevant today, as I sit in my comfortable, suburban home in Minneapolis -- the flash point of awakening civil unrest that has swept around the planet. I post this because my deepest hope is that this time, history will change. THIS time, we will embark on a future that might possibly resemble in some way, the future the original series of STAR TREK shows. I did not march; but that does NOT mean I don't care. I need to do what fits my personality. I need to do something that I can do effectively that might lead to systemic changes in our society. Until then, read and if you like STAR TREK, watch these two episodes.
My wife and I just finished watching the two part episode and to say
that it scared the bejeezis out of me would be to phrase it mildly.
From Wikipedia: “[In Past Tense (part 1 and 2] The crew of the Defiant is thrown back in time to 2024
on Earth. The United States of America has attempted to solve the problem of
homelessness by erecting ‘Sanctuary Districts’ where unemployed and/or mentally
ill persons are placed in makeshift ghettos.”
Written
in 1994 some time, it includes the use of Internet podcasting (which didn’t
really catch on until 2004) as well as the eerily prescient idea of “Sanctuary
Districts” (https://americasvoice.org/blog/what-is-a-sanctuary-city/).
Even
in the 90s, it was a real suggestion “…an article in the Los Angeles Times described
a proposal by the Mayor [Richard J. Riordan (R)] that the homeless people of
that city could be moved to fenced-in areas so as to contain them, in an effort
to ‘make downtown Los Angeles friendlier to business.’…” to put aside part of
downtown Los Angeles as a haven, nice word, a haven for the homeless.’…‘That
was what [our fictional] Sanctuary Districts were, places where the homeless
could just be so no-one had to see them, and literally there it was in the
newspaper. We were a little freaked out.’” (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Past_Tense,_Part_I_(episode))
But
it never happened, and the episode was written thirty years before the fictional
Bell Riots took place in San Francisco’s Sanctuary District A. This social
shift is part of the original Star Trek timeline and, as Captain Sisko notes, “It
was a watershed event…” in that it precipitated a reevaluation of how society,
in particular, American society treats the mentally ill and homeless.
Only
that’s five years from now, and the Bell
Riots took place on October 2, 2024. There are already rumblings every which
way that have made this far more possible in OUR future than it could have
appeared from Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe’s 1994. Things are very,
very different in 2019.
The
theme running through this episode is that the Sanctuary Districts were a total
surprise to everyone. From the wealthy “Interweb” magnate, Chris Brynner to the
mentally ill Grady who was living in the District; and from Vin, the guard and Lee,
the social worker – none of them had any idea how the Districts happened. They
just…grew. No blame, no “The Republicans…” or “The Democrats…” or “The Unions…”.
The Sanctuary Districts just happened.
For
me, this is more frightening than if they had been planned by an evil
government (take your pick of who you define as evil, every government has been
defined as evil by someone in the country at some time…)
I’ve
heard it said that the actor who play’s Captain Sisko is a deep thinker. In the
episode, because he knows that the future of (at least) the United States hangs
in the balance, he yells at Vin, the guard who keeps coming across as a tough
guy, disdainful of and in his mind, superior to the “dims” and the “gimmes” of
the District.
As
I watched it, it appeared that Avery Brooks was doing more than acting; doing
more than just “getting into his part”. Holding a shotgun under Vin’s chin, Brooks-Sisko-Bell
shouts, “‘You don't know what any of this is about, do you? You work here, you
see these people every day, how they live, and you just don't get it!’”
“‘What
do you want me to say? That I feel for them? That they got a bad break? What
good would it do?’”
“‘It'd
be a start! Now, you get back in that room and you shut up!’”
Vin
hangs his head. He knows Bell is right. He knows he’s just given up; and he
clearly has no idea how he got to be this way.
Lee
confesses to Dr. Bashir that, “‘…[I] processed a woman with a warrant on her
for abandoning her child because she couldn’t take care of him and left him
with a family she worked for. [I] felt sorry for her and didn’t log her into
the system which would have alerted the police, instead [I let] her disappear
into the Sanctuary. [My] supervisor almost fired [me] when the incident was
revealed. [I don’t] know what happened to the woman but [I] think about her all
the time.’ Bashir explains that it's not her fault the way things are.” But she
clearly has given up on the system.
If
you haven’t watched this episode in a while, take the time to do so.
Then
do something. I guess it really doesn’t matter WHAT you do. As
Congress,
no matter the stripe, isn’t interested in doing anything for the “unwashed
masses”; nothing substantial that is purely beneficial for the majority of
Americans and has nothing to do with personal profit or gain; that’s all about
making life better for most of us. Like lowering health care costs and forcing
pharmaceutical companies to just charge us 20% over cost for all drugs of any
kind – from aspirin to Glybera (“…first approved in October 2012 for familial
lipoprotein lipase deficiency (LPLD), a rare genetic disorder that disrupts the
normal breakdown of fats in the body…[the] drug was never approved in the US,
but would have cost more than $1.2 million per year. It will not be marketed
any further in Europe by drug maker uniQure as it has become evident that it
will be a commercial failure.” https://www.health24.com/Medical/Meds-and-you/News/7-of-the-most-expensive-treatments-in-the-world-20180129)
As
Brooks-Sisko-Bell notes, “It'd be a start!”
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