A Geek History of Time - Episode 280 - Gabriel Bell Riots Revisited Part I

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Good evening, Geek Timers. It is September 2024. A few years ago, Ed and I did a watch-along of the two episodes of Deep Space Nine called Past Tense and Past Tense Part 2. In it, the crew of the Defiant ends up going back in time at various intervals. Bashir and Sisko, still with his hair, end up going back to September of 2024. And they enact and participate in, and as it turns out, Sisko is the creator of, the Bell Riots. The Bell Riots were a series of events on Earth that took place in San Francisco

in what was known as a sanctuary district. I believe it was Sanctuary District A. It was, according to Deep Space Nine, America's attempt at dealing with the homelessness problem that had arisen so drastically and so badly that they ended up creating walled off ghettos for people so that those people would not interact with people who were housed. The result was you had ghettos and you had uprisings and you had deprivation and things like

that and the whole system was essentially broken and you had one band-aid struggling to hold all the pieces together. You had police brutality, you had social services that did their best but were understaffed and did not work, you had free housing and free food and theoretic employment, but quite honestly they were internment camps for people and it also included people with mental illness issues Anyway, it was about a 20 square block area, which is about eight square blocks short of what Chinatown was in the 1880s And it was an overcrowded slum the result was

after the riots that had been precipitated by vast amounts of homelessness and uncaring or incapable federal, state, and local government, the result was a huge riot that broke everything open. And that was considered in Deep Space Nine, as well as in the rest of Star Trek canon thereafter, the turning point for not just America, but the Earth, but the world. And as a result, things got better and better. Eventually, I think there was a third world war somewhere in there after 2024. Anyway, it seems like this is just the exact right time to replay those three episodes. quite frankly it's September of 2024. We do have huge problems of homelessness here in the United States. California where the Gabriel Bell riots were set, specifically San Francisco, in California the total population of people who are unhoused at this moment is roughly 161,000 people.

161,500 something. That's about 27-28% of the total homeless population in the United States. New York comes in a distant second with about 91,000 unhoused people. If we were to take a look at the rate per 10,000 citizens or 10,000 people living there, California has 43.7 unhoused people for every 10,000 people there are. In fact, last year we had the highest number of unhoused people in our history as a nation In fact where I live which is the Northern California area the capital

Has been abysmal in the way that it has addressed homelessness and unhoused individuals to the point where There is a camp called Camp Resolute if I recall the name correctly and they have been struggling against the city of Sacramento proper to maintain getting to keep the space that no one else was using that they are currently in. Now there's discussions of moving them out and using the police to move them along and destroy their stuff. As of this

recording they've actually been ordered to vacate Camp Resolution Monday morning which is tomorrow morning as of this recording. So the Gabriel Bell riots are absolutely still salient. We originally recorded the watch along three episodes in October of 2020, which if you recall was during the pandemic and after the summer of protests against police violence on our citizens. We figured that was a good time to take a look at the Gabriel Bell riots. I think it's good to revisit it, because it's cool to have an episode about the time that we are actually existing, and then to review that. So just on the neatness factor, it's probably a good idea to replay it. But also it's good to take

a look back at where we were in 2020, what was happening then compared to what's happening now. How far have we come? How far have we not? And to see how well our comments back then have aged, and if we have any apologies to make, or if we need to actually be more strident in our critique and our criticisms. Anyway, that's kind of the point of science fiction, right? Whatever the case may be. We hope that you enjoy these three episodes for the next three weeks, and then we will return to our regularly scheduled episodes that have nothing to do with analyzing the times in which something was made or the times about which something was made.

Because if there's one thing we strive for, it's total and complete irrelevancy in what we do. So kick back, enjoy or think hard. I don't really know if enjoy is the right word for an episode about the Gabriel Bell Riots, but either way, let us know what we missed. Let us know what we kept going well. But either way, let us know what we missed. Let us know what we kept going well, and if anything changed over the last 200 episodes or so.

My god, we've been doing it that long. Anyway, onward to the Gabriel Bell Riots. Wow. You're gonna like this. Oh, no, I'm not. Because there is no goddamn middle This is not unlike ancient Rome, by the way, not so much the family circus Yeah

A lot of you want to create self-sustaining farms and you got any crystals. I know okay. I understand that But yeah, I'm reading Livy, who is a shitty historian. Because of your eye gougers. Others say that because Laurentia's body was common to all the shepherds around, she was called a she-wolf. Which is a Latin term for whore. You were audible last season. It just, most of it was you slamming the table. As the Romanists at the table. Well, duh. Obviously. I ipso facto.

Right. You know, to engage in a little of my own dog Latin. You have a sword rat. This is a Geek History of Time. Where we connect nervous to the real world. My name is Ed Blaylock. I'm a distance world history teacher and part of the time English teacher here in Northern California. Currently trying to use the long weekend we're about to go into

to recover from my first full week of distance instruction. Because of course the district I'm teaching in got shut down on day one of distance instruction and then days two and three were cancelled and then we had a weekend and then we came back on Monday and So caught up with us then Kinda almost yeah, so and and so who are you sir? I'm Damian Harmony. What fresh hell are you undergoing right now? Well, I'm Damien Harmony I am a distance Latin teacher slash tech support

So well, okay when you say distance teacher slash tech support is just built in. Yeah, apparently like come on apparently So we had a training today. We had a training today and they said that there's three trainers one who runs the chat one who? Leads the training and one who takes care of the tech stuff. And I was like, wow, that sounds nice. So where are my other two team members? Right, yeah. When I'm doing my job, I'd like, you know, can you give me a couple of minions?

I'd like to employ people too. Yeah, you know. And the cool thing is that we can rotate round robin, You know, can you give me a couple of minions? I'd like to employ people too. Yeah, you know. And the cool thing is that we can rotate round robin. So next week you teach and then I do the tech and on and on. That would make sense. So yes, I am a distance Latin teacher in a district that, how to put this, we negotiated and got an MOU for the first four days of school.

Now we still have to figure out the next 179. And negotiations are literally ongoing right now. So we'll date this. And I'm going back to them when we're done with this. Hopefully by the time we're done with this, you know what? No, I've heard enough about how negotiations work with your district. Never mind. I'm not going to say anything. But for those of you in the audience who aren't, you know, commie, pinko, union types, you need to understand that MOU means

Memorandum of Understanding and it's a term in labor, labor, labor negotiations, labor terms, labor contracts. That is, okay, look, we're not going to put this into the actual text of the contract itself because it's a niche case or this is a temporary bandaid until we can negotiate a long-term solution. And so literally what that means is, okay, we've reached this agreement for the first four days after that We still don't know what the fuck we're doing. Yeah, that's how Implacable they are so but I'm biased because I'm a selfish teacher who wants to not die

So that's who I am come on how dedicated are you like clearly you're not dedicated to the kids No, if you value your life, then what are you in education for exactly? Exactly not not that we're bitter at all. So let's just go over what's going on right now right now. There's a pandemic there are um police officers killing unarmed black people in their custody at alarming rates there are White nationalists going into those same cities afterward to protest for their rights, which I don't quite get, including shooting at people, running people over and starting fights. There are others who are pretending to be the protesters who are saying, hey, we do want justice.

The schools are basically in a state of physical arrest in that they can't seem to get shit done all of California is on fire Two hurricanes blew through the deep south It's bad it's really bad. Yeah. Yeah, I figured the best way to get away from all of that ed is that tonight? We're just gonna watch a couple episodes of deep Space Nine because I want to get away for a while. I want to enjoy some science fiction which will help me escape the reality that we're in because that is what science fiction is deliberately designed for is to simply help me escape from the social problems that we're facing today. Yes, it's just pure fluff.

Yes. from the social problems that we're facing today. Yes, it's just pure fluff. Yes, it's. Yeah, never ever has it ever been used to comment on social ills. Right. No. So, yeah. No. No.

So, when I just picked these two episodes out of the blue and did a little research, I must have gotten unlucky. I found the two that were social justicy. So. Out of all of Star Trek Trek canon the only two episodes that are ever Just yeah at all season three episodes 11 and 12 deep space 9 We're gonna do a watch along but before we do we should probably get into the meat of it a bit

So how much do you know about? 1995 bit. So how much do you know about 1995? OK, well, hold on. And technically 94, because this came out in January of 95. OK, 1994, there was a congressional election. Oh, shit. OK, so because 1992 was while Billy Clinton becoming

president of the United States, because in January of 93, that was the year I graduated high school. And I remember seeing his inauguration speech in a journalism class as a senior in high school. So in 94. When we talked about, what was it, the New World Order in wrestling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so 1994 would then be the congressional midterm elections

during his first term when a rancid Idaho spud by the name of Gingrich Which by the way manages to sound both like gangrene and Grinch simultaneously. Yep led led a Junta Promising a contract with America that was basically a thinly veiled promising a contract with America that was basically a thinly veiled Set of excuses to to do what the K Street Mafia wanted done and try to drown government in a bathtub

Okay, so you know a little bit about 1994 Yeah, so 1994 was the year of that election 92 So you're going back too far or was it? No, it's 90. Well, hold on No, I'm not because I I think I if we're talking about, you know Star Trek getting social justice and we're talking about 1994 I have some guesses because in 1992 There were the the LA riots, mm-hmm Which were spasmodic and terribly, terribly destructive and got massive, massive

airplay on the nightly news with the mainstream media being their usual vulture like selves You know showing you know all again all these spasmodic violence going on and Not giving an awful lot of attention to the legitimate anger and grievance of the communities that were the most badly most badly impacted by all of that most badly impacted by all of that. So, I mean, you know, and the Republican, you know, the, what am I trying to say, the Republican lawmakers who were behind all of this stuff were basically playing to the same set of

Reaganite welfare queen chaos in the inner city law and order tropes that had been used all the way back to Nixon and so yeah that's that's kind of what I recall okay well here's what I've got. I kind of put together a bit of a timeline. In January of 1994, I only went back to 94 because I was looking at the time in which these writers would have written these episodes. And so I go back to 94.

So in January 94, the Northridge earthquake happened. It was a 6.7 on the Richter scale. So destroying large chunks of LA. And this will be important later. In January of 94, the coldest temperatures ever recorded in Indiana happened during a record cold spell. It went down to negative 36 degrees Fahrenheit. In January of 94, Bill Clinton, in his State of the Union address, called for an assault weapons ban, as well as a welfare reform.

So he's doing his standard boilerplate centrism stuff. In January of 94, through March of 94, the Tonya Harding Nancy Kerrigan tale played out. Where Kerrigan got clubbed in the kneecap Oh, right. Yeah, and then it just like exploded because it was Jeff Gululi and it was You know the the bodyguard and oh my god and it was a story in some ways of have and have not Carrigan was very rich and and You know entitled hard and and Harding wasrigan was very rich and entitled.

And Harding was decidedly not. Yeah, decidedly not. Yeah. April of 94, Nixon dies. Kurt Cobain dies. Oh, wow. And three high schools get burnt down by the same arsonist. Oh, yeah.

I had forgotten that last one okay in June of 94 the OJ Simpson murders oh Shit really mm-hmm Okay now June leading into July tropical storm Alberto leaves thousands homeless in the southeast Okay, and now remember that's gonna be some overlap with the The Palm Sunday tornadoes by the way Alright, let's see. Oh, yeah, the Palm Sunday tornadoes happened in March. I skipped. Yeah left thousands homeless So now you've got the the Palm Sunday tornadoes and then you've also got June until July Alberto leaving thousand homeless, which means that some people got

hit twice. September of 94, Bill Clinton signs the assault weapons ban ending all democracy as we know it plunging us into a dystopia where nobody could kill large groups of people quickly and had to do it with knives, handguns and small magazines. Thankfully, St. Bush, peace be unto his name, freed us from this tyranny with the Congress of Angels, allowing this oppression to sunset in 2004 and school and mass shootings started climbing back up to respectable numbers again Dude, why do you hate freedom? It's inconvenient

Yeah, yeah, okay September of 94 baseball players go on strike for the fourth time in 22 years during the season. They'd gone on strike previously, not during the season. And this is because, and this is in 22 years, they did it four times, because the owners colluded to keep free agency artificially suppressed and were trying to institute a salary cap. The people, however, did not give a shit and blamed the players.

For the first time in American history, the workers actually got blamed for the actions of the owners of the industry and the public failed to do its due diligence and pay attention to the actual numbers involved. Luckily we all learned from this and it's been a workers paradise ever since. Okay wait, so your usual level of dry sarcasm is of course evident in the second half of that And and I'm assuming it's also there in the first part as well Well, they did go on strike for the fourth time in 22 years. Yeah. Yeah, I'm talking about I'm talking about the for the first time in American history

people, you know blaming workers instead of the owners because I Know I know I know about some like coal miner strikes well name names 30 all right name 30 go ahead I'll get my you know shit we actually probably cook yeah I'm sure we could yeah I'm sure we could also it's worth noting that you know one of one of the armed rebellions in American history that they don't tell you about was in fact, you know coal miner strike a Massive coal miner strike that actually turned into no kidding a shooting war. Yes between you know

Security personnel and and the National Guard of the state in question and you know Miners who you know didn't want to die on the job or get paid starvation wages. So right. Or live in company towns. Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like I said, workers paradise ever since then. Right. Yeah. Ever since then. Yeah. Like I don't I don't understand what you and I bitch about all this. I mean, frankly, I I just I only I only bring up issues because I have nothing else to do with my time. Right. You know, because we live we live in such an enlightened, you know, it's been fantastic. It really is.

This is all totally normal and fine. Yeah. Yeah. In October of 1994, a man opens fire on the White House with a semi-automatic rifle trying to kill Bill Clinton. And this is only six weeks after a Cessna crashed on the South Lawn. Okay, I remember both of those. Yep. Was, I'm trying to remember what, do you remember the details, the Cessna thing?

Because I'm trying to remember whether that was actually some nut job, like trying to, trying to whack Uncle Billy or if that was just a really, really unfortunate, not entirely competent civil pilot. I don't, you know, it's funny, I did a dive on it, but I've done so much research since then on other things that it kind of fell out. Yeah, because the guy with the AKS, I know, or SKS. Yeah, SKS, Jesus Christ, you know this stuff. Well, I know. I know or sks I know yes, Jesus Christ you know this stuff Oh, I know not so anyway, you know the guy the guy with the guy with the Chaykan rifle

I remember as as no seriously if you open fire on the White House, it's pretty clear what your intentions are Yeah, but but but I remember at the time Kind of wondering okay. Well do we know that this guy was like loony enough to be trying to kamikaze run or was this just? Like I'm trying to showboat and I like really fucked up or Or was this just I'm I'm you know I had a mechanical failure of some kind at literally the absolute worst possible time in the worst possible place it in the worst possible place because Cuz I mean like again as I mentioned any number of times before I've grown up around airplanes and like crazy shit like that

does just happen so I I kind of want to do do the dive again on that and figure out, was that guy actually a loony or just really unfortunate? Right. What I'm looking at now, because you asked and I had time, he was not mentally well. He bore.

He was basically doing a, what do you call it, a publicity stunt. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, it still caused them to re-examine their security stuff, including putting surface to air missiles. Oh, yeah. Well, they've neither confirmed nor denied that rumor.

But yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, even if you didn't do it then after September 11, you'd know they've done it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And they took down the solar panels.

Might as well put up something. So in November? Whatever they've got is almost certainly man portable, because that's easier to pack away. And you can't spot it with satellite satellite imagery until you know you need to use it So anyway, sorry moving on in November of 94 hurricane. Oh actually before hurricane Gordon happened There was a major commercial conference about the World Wide Web in San Francisco the first of its kind

Wow, yeah like something that's so, like literally, we couldn't do this podcast. It would not exist were it not for this thing. Especially now. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry.

I just need to marvel for a second at how long ago that was, like. Yeah. OK. Wow. You were a senior in high school Well, okay. No if we're talking about 94 I was a freshman in college. Oh, okay. Yeah, and this would actually 94 by 94 I would have been well by that time in 94. I would have been a sophomore college. So all right, so I was a

Emerson hole junior in high school. Okay. Yeah. So, in November of 94, Hurricane Gordon left thousands homeless. Oh, yeah. That's three things that have made thousands homeless, not to mention the earthquake that started this whole thing that also left people homeless. November of 94, the Republicans, like you said get the house the Senate and they start the contract with America Which was totally rad and perfectly fine

Also November 94 George W Bush you may have heard of him. He becomes the governor of Texas. It's the last election I recall him winning November of 94 Prop 187 passes. Do you remember Prop 187? Oh shit. Yep. Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay, right now I'm having a brain fart. I know it works. Prop 187 says that basically California voters decided that they didn't want public services going to certain people. Oh, right. OK, yeah. Do you remember which those certain people were? Undocumented immigrants. Yes.

In November of 94, Tupac gets shot five times and robbed. He is not killed yet. OK. Yep. In fact, this might have started the beef that he had, which ended up leading to him getting killed. But people can tell us that on the Twitter. In December of 94 Mexico's economy completely implodes and needs bailing out by the US. Maybe we should think about that in terms of Prop 187.

Oh wow. Yeah okay OK. Hold on. I'm trying to remember. Did that have something to do with the oil prices at the time? I'm trying to remember what the? It was, if I recall correctly, it was the peso had just thoroughly devalued. Yeah, OK. Yeah, because I do remember high school friends talking

about how incredibly cheap it was, even more than ever before, to go across the border to be obnoxious Americans in a foreign city in Tijuana. Yeah, because you're a San Diego baby. Yeah. Miramesa High School. Yeah, no. So yeah. I remember fighting Mirameses.

I remember. No, the Marauders. The Marauders. Oh, Jesus Christ. The Marauders. Yeah. Bunch of white kids going down to Mexico in their name, the Marauders.

That's great. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know. Just as a total side note, did you ever watch the series Veronica Mars? No, but I totally wanted to I just didn't have time Okay, here's the deal. You need to watch it because we need we need to talk about that. Okay, because because Anyway, when you watch it when they talk about Neptune high My high school would be like a slightly down market version of Neptune high so like like all of the tensions

and all of the everything that you see in that high school environment existed in one level or another in mine and the divide between the really Comparatively very well off white kids and the working class other other kids from from the other other neighborhood feeding into the school Was was a thing and a source of tension And so I watch I watch all of that every time I rewatch Veronica Mars. I really watch all of that. I'm like, oh my Like I was never cool enough for badass enough to be Veronica, but like this environment this particular jungle is one I Recognize got you well, you kind of want to recast it with yourself Yeah, kind of kind of do like current me in old me's body

Yeah, yeah like dude, so Yeah Anyway, but we're getting off the subject So so Mexico's economy completely collapses and we were busy telling people fleeing across the border to try to find a job that And we're not gonna give you shit. Yeah, so, okay. Yeah so you shit. Yeah. So OK. Yeah. So I'm brave. So not necessarily the compassionate nor the generous. No. Right. Got it. OK. Yeah. Apparently the Statue of Liberty was

just apparently a lying. J.K. J.K. Yeah. In fairness it's a poem not a policy. Is that really in fairness? I know. You know, I kind of think it is like you should really judge a country by its policies, not its poetry. Like, OK, all right. And therefore I can poke my finger in America's eye for much further back going your racist assholes about people coming in like every chance you get.

So so, yeah, I do think in fairness that's that's worth doing. OK, yeah. I know you thought I was going a different way. I did. I genuinely did. But but there we go. All right. So that's the timeline leading up to what would have been in the writers' minds. Just what's in the news and in the, you know, in the ethersphere. Now, here's what's going on.

A layer behind that. Homeless rates had crested in 93 at 15.1%. And they were starting to come down to 14.5% in 1994. So they were dropping by half a percentage point. Now it's not much, and nobody at the time knew that it was gonna plummet during the rest of the Clinton presidency. What was known at that time was that it was a big problem and there was a lot of effort toward eliminating it. Not all that effort in the right direction by the way.

And actually homelessness, here's a little aside, homelessness doesn't start to rise again until a certain Texas governor becomes president I'm just gonna leave it there that it also rose sharply after he left office as the economy was in a tailspin due to deregulation that started haltingly at first in the 80s and then sped up in the 90s and really took off starting about 2001 by 2009 it was awful and the economy wouldn't recover back to the close to the 2000 numbers until about 2018. Also true about homelessness. Yeah. Yeah.

Now here's what has not happened yet. Okay. Oklahoma City bombing didn't happen yet. Bill Clinton's predations on Monica Lewinsky had not happened yet. Okay. And the contract with America had started, but the meanness of it hadn't really hit the streets yet

Okay, so yeah all of that, okay. No, I'm just okay. Okay. I buy that okay Just so everybody knows we've turned off the video so we can't actually see each other because I think it's improving the audio quality But it also means that it's kind of Do you want to? Yeah, we're not we're not we're not seeing any of the visual cues from each other about, okay, and you go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. McMurray, how you doing now?

But, God, I love that show. I have fallen in love with that show. If anybody wants some free advertising, Letter Kenny is where it's at. So fucking good. Anyway, the amount of events that left people homeless and the way that folks were scrambling to work towards something, the fact that the Rodney King riots, as you'd mentioned, had happened in April of 92 and the civil unrest that it revealed, combined with homelessness and the unrest that was growing to really high numbers by early to mid 90s, is it really any wonder that Deep Space Nine, the first science fiction

on television with a black captain, and technically he started as a commander, I know, but he ends up getting promoted, is it any surprise that DS9 would take this on? No, it shouldn't be. Right, it really shouldn't be. That's a really good point, it shouldn't be right. Really shouldn't be that's a really good point. It should not be Yeah, yeah, so in 94

Deep space 9 was writing about the the not distant future, but the distant past of the series Okay, okay, so it's 94 they're writing about 2024 which is 30 years from when they wrote it. And that's a standard thing. It's usually a generation or two. You know, this is what's the difference. It's in San Francisco, and San Francisco is supposed to be wildly out of control to the point of people just giving up on fixing it

and instead just trying to contain homelessness brutally. In 94, that didn't seem like it would be too far from the mark given the homelessness rates steady incline over the prior decades. And again, what's neat about this is that it is written about the distant past of the characters that we love or are still growing to love by this point. But it's absolutely our near future. So it's this really cool prism. Yeah, well, I'm gonna argue that by season three,

by season three they'd grown the beard to borrow terminology from talking about the series predecessor. And I think there were a lot of people by season three who were very much fans. I think it had gotten there at that point. I don't think, I mean the series hadn't gotten the chance yet to really get into the deep lore that wound up developing over the next multiple seasons.

But I think it was pretty solidly a popular choice. There was some division, of course, within the fandom because the series had been started after Roddenberry had passed. And one of his primary tenets had been that nobody in Starfleet is ever going to disagree with each other. And we're supposed to be portraying people as, you know, always utopian, better versions

of ourselves. And the folks behind Deep Space Nine went, you know, let's actually show these people having these disagreements. Like this is the first time that we really start seeing any deep disagreements within Star Fleet over policy. And the series wound up getting really dark. Well, now I have a theory behind this when it comes to it.

So the first Star Trek and Star Trek The Next Generation, both of them occur on the Enterprise. And the Enterprise flies from spot to spot. By design, you can have bottle episodes. Oh yeah. You have archetypical characters that you then put into different situations and then you tell us about ourselves that way.

Very valid way of doing a narrative. Deep Space Nine is literally a station, which means that the plot has to come to it. And it's a station on the frontier, by the way. So it kinda ties back to that old Western. But the plot comes to it, and when the plot comes to it, your characters end up being developed by the plot comes to it, and when the plot comes to it, your characters end up being developed by the plot. So the result is you have the largest plot arcs,

you have the largest character development overall, largely because it was on a station. Okay, yeah. All right, yeah, no, that makes perfect sense. You know, of course, part, all right that yeah, I know that that makes that makes perfect sense, you know, of course part of the reason that the original series and and next generation after it were You know bottle episode stuff was because the TV executive said You know, yeah, we we can't have these big long Arcs you have to have the ability for somebody to jump in and watch an episode without

having too much backstory they've got to worry about. Because that was the era of that level of TV. We hadn't yet seen in genre TV something like the X-Files. Well, by 95, of course, we had. But obviously for the original series and for the next generation we hadn't seen the X-Files which I think was one of the bigger examples like it was one of the first times that a series that tried to do an overarching story arc really managed to capture the public's imagination in a big way and prove that, no, no, we can actually do this. And so I think DS9 was the beneficiary of that development of the industry and of the art form.

Yeah, I agree. So now this this particular set of episodes Is about the future and as we know Anything written about the future is actually written about the present This particular episode dropped a character Dax Jadzia Dax she's the only actual alien of the three characters that get dropped in the middle of San Francisco. She's also the only one that can present as white. And she presents as white. It drops her, Dr. Bashir, who is of North African descent,

and Commander Sisko. At that time, he was still a commander, who is African American, Francisco, at that time he was still a commander, who was African American, in the middle of San Francisco in 2024. Now, I'm looking at my calendar and it says 2020. So in four years in San Francisco this is gonna happen. So you have two men of color and a woman who passes for white. She ends up in the upper classes,

and Bashir and Cisco end up locked into the sanctuary district. Okay. It's also no coincidence that this occurs in San Francisco. Most things do because Starfleet, right? But also when Reagan cut funding to social programs and institutions as a governor, the homeless problem in San Francisco increased quite a bit. The rough estimate of the amount of homelessness or I'm sorry the amount of homeless people with mental illness issues is upwards of 45 percent and Yeah, and people who are homeless who have severe mental illness issues is roughly 25 percent. Oh

uh, illness issues is roughly 25 Oh, wow So in the episode when the cops mentioned dims in a reference to the two men of color who have no id Which I would point to vagrancy laws that enabled people to arrest black folks and enslave them again legally. Yeah Um, it's very specific writing Okay, yeah when when gabriel bell gets Bell gets stabbed spoiler alerts here on a Almost 30 year old episode. No medical care was given in a survey of the homeless in five major American cities 49% of the homeless reported having violence done to them 62% said that they'd witnessed violence and 50% of homeless women reported sexual violence within the last 12 months

And then there's targeted because they're homeless violence 1769 acts of violence against the homeless individuals or individuals who are homeless by housed perpetrators Occurred from 99 to 2017, according to the National Council on Homelessness. 476 of those resulted in death. You want to guess who the perpetrators tend to be? I'm going to go out on a limb here. I'm going to say they are overwhelmingly young. male, and white. And if we have socioeconomic data, I'm going to say they are solidly bourgeois.

Yeah. They're definitely homed. I couldn't scratch further than that, unfortunately. Now California leads by more than triple the next state in terms of incidence. Some of this is based on population, of course, but also you have, San Francisco's a really good example, tremendous haves and have not disparity. Well, and what's remarkable, I mean, in my own experience, what's remarkable about the Bay Area in particular, because again, San Diego, baby, and like I already talked about

the fact there was class consciousness and distinction in a big way where I went to high school. But the starkness of the difference in a place like Oakland Where you can literally have different sides of the same street? Like like there will be there will be one one district on one side of the street has you know median home prices of a million plus and Literally on the opposite side of the street You're looking at houses being a third of that value Or they're not actually being individual homes. You're looking at you know

apartment complexes and other other other kind of low-income housing and And like and and literally it's a street yeah and you know where where I grew up it you know you kind of you kind of had to move through one neighborhood into another neighborhood into another neighborhood to get to get that kind of okay well you know we're moving out of scripts ranch any of any of my friends from high school are gonna know exactly what I'm talking about. But you start in Scripps Ranch,

where I'll admit was my neighborhood, and you had people with $700,000 homes. And then you move into part of Miramesa, where you're looking at homes in the $400,000 range to another part of Miramesa, where you're looking at homes in the $400,000 range to another part of Miramesa where you're looking at homes in the $150,000 range, but there's a gradation. Right. The Bay Area is literally, the haves and the have nots

are literally rubbing elbows. Yes, and yet they're ignored. You step over them as you ignore them. Like it's impossible to ignore and you ignore them. By the way, all these numbers do not include police brutality, nor do they include digital bullying, which has been on the rise since 2017. So yeah, it's,

yeah. How to put um Also the amount of violence spiked during the housing crash So in 2009 you see a large number go up. Oh, well, yeah, yeah Yeah, you got to go kick someone when you're feeling down. Yeah and Reporting has gotten lower and lower since 2017. That's the other thing. Because Herman Cain is now the secretary,

and he is not an expert on housing and urban development. And yet he's in charge. And so he dictates the focus of that bureaucracy. And it turns out it's not the homeless. Well, no. So I forget. What did Herman Cain do for a living prior to becoming the HUD secretary? I really genuinely have trouble actually saying this out loud

because it's so hard to believe when you hear the man fucking speak, but he was a brain surgeon. Neurosurgeon, right? Well, yeah, literally a brain surgeon. Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah, well, yeah brains are literally a brain surgeon Yeah, yeah Yeah So the man the man who who tried to argue that the pyramids were built as a green storage structures He knows about housing and urban development. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah

No, Joseph, I love those were those were built by Joseph their grander the silos that Joseph built, you know You know advised Pharaoh to build No grander the silos that Joseph built, you know, you know, advised Pharaoh to build. No, Herman. I swear he's even he's the guy that has pictures of Jesus and him in a picture too, right? Well, yeah. Yes, he does. Yeah. Yeah. Because I remember, I remember hearing that he had pictures of him and Jesus and not just one, pictures of him and Jesus. And because one pictures of him and Jesus and and because I was like wow that's really funny because I know that Alex Rodriguez the baseball player had pictures of him as a centaur pictures right I remember

that yeah I did pictures yeah it's just like wow I I kind of want to see what you did there yeah thank you I kind of want to do that. I kind of want to have pictures of me as a pan. Oh, there you go. Because I got the belly for it and I got the quads for it. That could work. That could work. So yeah, no, Herman Cain is a very special individual.

Like he is walking evidence that You can in fact be Smart enough in a particular area. Mm-hmm to do something that requires a very great deal of study and a very great deal of work Yeah, and and you can you can be That kind of book smart and then be a complete Ignoramus yes Like across the board in so many other ways Like yeah

Yeah, it boggles the mind it doesn't it doesn't because if you think about someone who is a Tremendous doesn't because if you think about someone who is a tremendous scholar and can't figure out how to unclog a toilet or I mean like you you you get people that are savants in things you know depth of knowledge and like I get a kick out of the fact that people always quote Einstein when he talked about where the bees go, the humans will go. It's like he's not an expert on zoology or botany or ecology. He understands gravity and mathematics and quantum physics really well.

Yeah. That doesn't mean he knows fuck all about those things. That doesn't mean he knows a damn thing. Well, you know, and there's been a story on Facebook that a bunch of my friends, I think mutual friends of ours have jumped onto that I don't remember which university it was. Think of Chicago had handed their COVID planning over to a pair of doctorates in physics. planning over to a pair of doctorates in physics. And these two physicists had apparently said, well, you know, this has really been a challenge and we recognize the importance of doing this work, but our sense of intellectual curiosity

has really taken a hit here because this just isn't as stimulating to us as the stuff we normally do in that remarkably arrogant way that physicists are about anything that's not physics. Like, well, I don't understand why you guys need to have your own field. Just do the math this way and then add this, that, and the other thing. And it's like, that's not how any of this works. Oh, wow. And so yeah, I guess one of the theories from one of my friends is that the university went to the epidemiologist because they have an epidemiology department,

right? Right. They went to the epidemiologist and said, what do we do? And the epidemiologist said, you send everybody the fuck home. And that just wasn't acceptable. So they said, well, who else do we have who's smart? Oh, the physicists, physicists were like, yeah, we can do this. We know physics. Fuck that. And and now they have, you know, explosion of cases and there's, you know, it's it's turned into a complete dumpster fire. You know, so it's yeah, like yeah, so Herman Cain is another example of that.

Like clearly, I mean to become a neurosurgeon, you do need to have a working brain. And yet he seems to be willing and able to turn it off. Well again, he's not a humanities guy. He is a, he understands neurology, which I'm going to really paint with a roller, like a giant industrial-sized roller. That's like plumbing for thoughts, you know? Like ultimately it's this tube goes here and does this

and sends this thing there. Yeah, these impulses go to this place. Yeah. You know, like he understands basically human circuitry. He doesn't understand fuck all about society or history, apparently. Yeah, well, yeah, no. So the writers and the creators of this show brought their own baggage, of course. Yeah.

Now, Ira Bear, and maybe I'm butchering his name, so, you know, geek timers, go ahead and tell us. But the executive producer specifically was trying to recall the Attica riots in 1971 when he envisioned the Gabriel Bell riots in his episode. He was also very inspired by the homelessness that he saw in Santa Monica. And here's a quote by him.

He said, quote, the future we extrapolated is very, very likely to happen in some form or another. It was intended as a wake-up call. This is why Star Trek is science fiction and Star Wars is not, by the way. Okay. Now the- Okay, well you're saying because of that conscious, conscious social statement being made.

Okay. Yeah. All right. So Robert Hewitt-Wolfe, the original writer of the screenplay, he said that he originally pictured Cisco going back in time and being homeless. This idea didn't work as well, but clearly he had his contemporary times on his mind, and that plot ended up getting explored in Voyager, Future's End. And it makes sense. Homeless guy claims that he's from the future and nobody believes him and step right by him, etc.

Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah, it's easy. It does. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Jonathan Frakes directed this, by the way. Oh, really? Yeah, andkes directed this by the way. Oh Really? Yeah, and this episode actually got him the directing job on first contact Really which is really interesting because that's another go back in history version of Star Trek Okay. Yeah Yeah, it is. You're right. I haven't thought of that But yeah, that makes perfect sense And now you understand why number one was in all of like distilled shots Whereas like, you know picard was in the dynamic shots. Yeah, because franks is like i'm gonna be over here

Um now people have asked bearer why he only showed one side the liberal side and I love his answer He says quote people are still even writing what? 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 overcrowded camps. Yeah.

Now it makes sense that people are asking that nowadays because we have a president who said there are very good people on both sides of a Nazi march that killed Heather Heuer. Yeah. Now the frustrating part is how prescient this episode continues to be. The Bell Riots are named for a black man whose death sparked change on a larger scale. We have the George Floyd protests. And the Breonna Taylor protests. But specifically they're like looking to make a law that's called the George Floyd, like they're naming the legislation for him. By the way, COVID and protests, former heads of the CDC. Okay, so I just want to point out because a lot of people like oh well

You know with kovat and all that The the former head of the CDC. Dr. Tom Frieden said that if the government's trust quote is undermined by violent policing Or it's undermined by ham-handed public health actions that don't respect communities That's going to have a negative impact on our ability to fight disease. Thus, the protests for Breonna Taylor and George Floyd were more important to public health than was our social distance. Yup. 1,200 doctors said, quote, staying at home, social distancing, and public masking

are effective at minimizing the spread of COVID-19. To the extent possible, we support the application of these public health best practices during demonstrations that call attention to the pervasive lethal force of white supremacy. However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission.

We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of black people in the United States. We can show that support by facilitating safest protesting practices without detracting from demonstrators ability to gather and demand change This should not be confused with permissive stance on all gatherings particularly protests against stay-at-home orders Mm-hmm We're looking at you Orange County. Mm-hmm. Oh shit. I'm looking at Michigan too. Yeah. Well, yeah, Kentucky and

Yeah, and a number of other places. There's a local dude up here in like Rocklin Who's you know trying to run for office and he's saying send the kids to school. Oh Yeah, yeah Yeah, he doesn't deserve his name. No. Yeah. Yeah, no and so some some things to Yeah, some things to keep in mind as we're watching this is that watch how Bashir and Cisco are really, really shook after a few days visit too, like emotionally.

And Dax as well, although she lived the higher life, but she still saw her friends in peril, and she's also lived over 300 years. And what they're shook about is kind of like, how could they let it get here? And it's the classic frog in the boiling pot argument, right? And Bashir says in the show, so when you watch it, you'll get to this quote, if we are frightened enough

or desperate enough, how would we react? Would we stay true to our ideals or would we just stay here right back where we started? And I would say that 2016 showed us that it's at best a coin flip. Yeah. And I think that 2020 is gonna show us for certain which way we're gonna go. Yeah. So that's the primer for watching the episodes. OK. So what we're going to do here is we're going to kill this episode, and then we're going to record both of the watch

along episodes. We're going to release this episode and the first episode together on the same time in the same week. So that way they'll release as a pair. And then the following week will be the second week of the past tense. OK, I like that. So before we get going, do you have any books

that you would like to recommend? I actually do for a change. I just picked up. Hold on a second while I grab it. Mm-hmm I just picked up the flying tigers the untold story of the American pilots who waged a secret war against Japan by Sam Kleiner And it is so far I've only gotten a little ways into it and I Had not previously known the story of Claire Chennault, the founder and commander of the Flying Tigers.

And his biography up to 1937 is really remarkable and One of the most interesting things is I can already see Even even before the Air Force was the Air Force when it was the Army Air Corps and from the very beginning of Army aviation there has been a Conflict between two two different wings of the organization the fighter mafia and the bomber mafia And in the very earliest phases as it turns out in the very earliest phases of Army aviation people were convinced that that nobody could stop bombers and Chanalt was trying to say no with smaller aircraft with guns we can we can we can stop bombers. And Chenault was trying to say, no, with smaller aircraft, with guns,

we can stop bombers. And so a big part of what the Flying Tigers were kind of about was kind of proving his theory. He actually wound up, he went to work at First 4 Chiang Kai Shek in 37. He left the US Army because his career had stalled because the other generals in the Army Air Corps were like, whatever, you're a stunt pilot, go away. And so he said, all right, I will, and went to work for Chiang Kai-shek trying to teach the nationalists how to build an Air Force. So yeah, so far, I haven't even gotten to the founding of the Flying Tigers proper.

And it's a great read. And I very highly recommend it. OK, nice. How about you? I'm going to recommend, as teachers, not a bad book to read this year, How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi. Really good book. My mom actually sent it to me.

And several of my teacher friends have started a reading group that I missed, unfortunately, about it. But it's a very solid book and it's how to put it I mean the names in the title like you know yeah it's yeah exactly what it says on the tin yeah you know and yeah read it all right very cool very cool. Cool. Where can we find each other on the social medias?

You can find me on Instagram as Mr. Blaylock. You can find me on Twitter as EhBlaylock. And as it turns out, I just went to my TikTok account today. And I may have been misquoting my address. I'm actually EhBlaylock there as well, not Mr. Blaylock, which I think is what I've been putting down. You can find both of us collectively on the Twitter at geekhistorytime.com. And where can they find you if they're looking for you, Mr. Harmony?

Well, if you're looking for me, you can find me at The Harmony. That's two H's in the middle on the Twitter and on the Insta. You can also find me every Tuesday night at 8.30 on twitch.tv forward slash capital puns. I'm going to be doing a fundraiser show for the Stonewall Foundation on October 1. I'm not sure if this episode will drop before or after that. So if it's after, then I did it and it was awesome.

With Capital Punishment. Otherwise, you know, go check it out. They're trying to raise money for LGBTQ youth and scholarships and what have you. And there's a couple other shows I know that this won't drop in time to advertise those So just check me every Tuesday night at 830 on Capital puns so it's twitch.tv forward slash capital puns

All right, there you go. All right. Well for a geek history of time. I'm Damian Harmony, and I'm Ed Blaylock engage