“Sliders” was a science fiction TV series broadcast from 1995 to 2000. The plot involves a group of dimensional travelers who utilize wormholes to “slide” from one parallel universe (or alternative reality) to another. Each universe they pass through illustrates some exaggeration or variation of our own time and culture. Re-runs of the show are syndicated on one of our local stations just before the local news comes on, and although we don’t really follow it, we often have it playing in the background.
In today’s episode, our heroes our dropped into an alternative California in some parallel reality where “Proposition 286″ has just been passed by a tyrannical populist and nativist government. People are rounded up off the streets by jack-booted thugs (I’ve always wanted to have a good excuse to use that phrase!) to be deported to save jobs for real Americans. Yep, black folks are not ‘real’ because they’re not white.
I can see why the show only lasted 5 seasons, twenty years ago. Can you imagine anything so ridiculous?
From the Alien Species Wiki entry on the Sliders episode, “California Reich”,
https://aliens.fandom.com/wiki/Eddie
On an Earth where the nationalist fervor that spread throughout Western Europe during the later half of the 19th century never came to pass, Adolph Hitler’s cry for a pure Aryan Germany was never heard, and thus World War II never came to be.
However, in 1996, Proposition 286, the Racial Repatriation Act sponsored by California Governor Schick was approved by the voters and minorities began to be rounded up. All this was in the name of pull the American economy out of the recession, preserving American (Caucasian) jobs.
Economic recovery facilitators, also known as “Stompers,” used violent force to capture and detain ethnic minorities and non-Caucasians.
By 1997, Schick campaigned for presidency, increasing his propaganda for ‘American for Americans”. Soon after his proclamation “Eddies”, tireless automatons, began to replace the detained migrants as a source of free labor. Migrants were detained and supposedly deported. In addition those not 100% Caucasian, determined through blood tests are sent for deportation. Its later revealed that the Eddies are actually people reported to have been processed for deportation; mutilated and stripped of their identity for cheap labor.
As always, “cheap labor” is what its really all about. No matter how many “illegals” we deport, there are always plenty of them here ready to take our jobs, and the Eddies never seem able to figure it out.
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I liked the show, but the FX were fading in later seasons . . .
- I just had the hots for Sabrina.