Star Trek's Sanctuary Districts are Eerily Prescient

[AFTT47]

I post this in this forum because I know a lot of AF members are Star Trek fans.

There was a 2-part episode of Deep Space Nine called 'Past Tense' which involved the heroes inadvertently time-traveling back to 2024 Earth. Two of them (Commander Sisko and Dr. Bashir) ended up in something called a sanctuary district which was a walled-off area which was essentially a prison for the unemployed and/or homeless. Here is a description of a sanctuary district from a Star Trek website: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sanctuary_District

Now check out what is taking shape today, just one year after the setting of the DS9 episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9eVJdHZeCw

It's a long video, just over 40 minutes so you might want to skim it. The parallels are amazing - and disturbing.

At its core, Star Trek bucks a lot of science fiction in that its very optimistic - in the long run. It has a lot of dismal stories for the near future though, telling that although things will get dramatically better, it will get worse in the short run.

Here's hoping that part is really fiction.