nooneknowiblogthis:

ameerawritesstuff:

ploppythespaceship:

friendly reminder that the exact time period referenced here is only eight years from now

This episode takes place in 2024 which would be right after a two-term Trump administration. They go to 2024 San Francisco and, guess what? America didn’t build A wall… we built a BUNCH of walls. We throw anyone who is unemployed/can’t work into ghettos and keep them from the rest of the country. All healthcare is privatised and the media is pressured to not report anything damaging to the government to the point where no channels are really brave enough to cover the news.

This came out in the 90s.

From Memory Alpha:

While the episode was filming, an article in the Los Angeles Times
described a proposal by the Mayor 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.” Alexander Siddig has commented on the amazing coincidence: “The episode was almost a cinematic version of that statement by the LA council.” (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion) As Ira Behr comments the plan was “to put aside part of downtown Los Angeles as a haven, nice word, a haven for the homeless.” Similarly, as Robert Wolfe says, “That was what the 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.” (Time Travel Files: “Past Tense”, DS9 Season 3 DVD, Special Features)

Ira Steven Behr also commented that (several months after the two-parter aired) “People are still
even writing that we only presented ‘one side’ in “Past Tense” and that
we should have presented ‘both sides’ and not just the ‘liberal’ point
of view – and I’m still trying to think what that means. In other words,
we should have showed the positive aspects of putting the homeless into
concentration camps? And I do admit we probably failed in that – we
really did not show the many, many wonderful aspects of life without
money and living in over-crowded camps“. (“The Behr Necessities, Star Trek Monthly, issue 12)