Sad Trek – How an exhausted liberalism killed sci-fi’s sunniest franchise
&gt; This new wave of Star Trek is internally consistent, then, in harboring a pessimistic view of the future, one that seems to emerge from a particular contemporary sensibility.<p>This is very accurate. But it has nothing to do with liberalism.<p>The view of our current future is bleak if you&#x27;re young. Climate change is poised to devastate large parts of the planet, disasters that used to be once in a century will be once every few years. Corruption is increasing, what leaders are getting away with now would have been totally crazy to think about 20 years ago. We live in a gilded age more extreme than in the 1920s, where the rich hoard the majority of resources. Many of the technologies that were supposed to lead to freedom and utopia have turned into a stark dystopia, like the internet, that threaten the very foundations of freedom. At the same time, the basic necessities (housing, education, healthcare) are almost out of reach for most young people. If you don&#x27;t already have a house, it&#x27;s hard to see how you will ever get into the market now. College is insanely expensive. And healthcare, particularly childcare since this affects the young most, has become completely unaffordable. New wealth isn&#x27;t shared anymore, since income become disconnected from productivity. Social mobility is down significantly. The rich barely pay taxes compared to everyone else. Major new social projects are increasingly unaffordable, that&#x27;s why our infrastructure is crumbling.<p>The US is coming apart at the seams in a way that hasn&#x27;t been seen since the civil war. It&#x27;s hard to see how the country will ever come back together. No one sees a path toward this. And one party is going down a dark road (they just had a convention in Hungary to learn how illiberal democracies work).<p>These problems aren&#x27;t specific to the US. They&#x27;re everywhere, different counties are just at different points along the path of decay. There&#x27;s now a nationalist party running at the federal level in Canada. France almost voted for a Nazi party. Poland and Hungary are barely democracies. Almost every index worldwide is going down sharply, from freedom of the press to the corruption index.<p>Star Trek isn&#x27;t dark because of liberalism. It&#x27;s dark because in the 1960s through the 1990s we lived through a golden age. Housing was affordable. Education was affordable. Healthcare was affordable, and childcare wasn&#x27;t a hurdle. Major climate wins were made (acid rain and the ozone hole). People were getting richer (at least until the 1980s). New technologies seemed poised to make life better.<p>Star Trek is dark because the future we see is dark. And it&#x27;s getting darker.