For years it was the all-but-official policy of the newspapers to ignore the black city, since the majority of readers lived in the predominantly white suburbs. And now that the papers do cover Detroit, boosters complain about a lack of balance. To me, that's like writing about the surf conditions in the Gaza Strip.So I was reading yet another cheery article about life in Detroit, America's leading producer of abandoned factories, vacant lots, and juvenile gunshot fatalities, when I realized that what the city is lacking is visionary leadership. They need a mayor with a solid plan; a plan like:
There has been too much violence. Too much pain. But I have an honorable compromise. Just walk away. Give me your pump, the oil, the gasoline, and the whole compound, and I'll spare your lives. Just walk away and we'll give you a safe passageway in the wastelands. Just walk away and there will be an end to the horror.
I'm moving to Detroit! They sound like they've turned the page and have nowhere to go but up. I even have my collander ready to make a nice protective headgear.
ReplyDeleteA motivated person could move there and be warlord withing 6 months!
ReplyDeleteYou know, there is a certain poetry when you view pictures of city blocks returning to nature, deer and coyote reclaiming land lost to developers.
ReplyDeleteA city laid fallow.
Every able-bodied productive adult has already taken your advice and walked away - or sped away in a foriegn made automobile.
ReplyDeleteHey, they all laughed when I stocked up on leather banana hammocks and hockey masks...
ReplyDeleteDetroit - America's Timbuktu.
ReplyDeleteGerry
If Detroit was happening somewhere warmer, I'd consider buying a great big chunk of it. As it is, fuck that noise.
ReplyDeleteThe American entrepreneur is alive and living in Detroit. Sumdood is driving around collecting fertilizer (pigeon and bat droppings) from floors of abandoned buildings. Then sells the "organic fertilizer" to suburban gardeners.
ReplyDeleteSilver lining and all that.
If Detroit is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower. Where, where have they gone? Now, it's nothing but flowers, There was a factory
ReplyDeleteNow there are mountains and rivers...Don't leave me stranded here I can't get used to this lifestyle.
Quoth perlhaqr
ReplyDeleteIf Detroit was happening somewhere warmer, I'd consider buying a great big chunk of it. As it is, fuck that noise.
You might want to keep an eye on Las Vegas, then, if the sort of things I've been hearing have any connection to reality.
(No guarantee of that, as I heard it from the MSM ...)
Las Vegas is indeed in big trouble - even the Strippers are feeling the pinch(no pun intended :) ). Housing prices have fallen 50%, and there's video on Youtube of block after block of empty houses.
ReplyDeleteThere's got to be some sort of connection between why Detroit and Las Vegas are going downhill so freaking fast. Wonder what it could be?
ReplyDeleteLook, all of the problems in that article revolve around a culture of jackassery that keeps making the same mistakes over and over again, for decades on end. But you can't talk about it. That would be racist.
ReplyDeleteYou can't fault them for all dropping out of school, cause going to school and getting an education is "acting white". Then they complain that whites have too much. It's a simple math that eludes them.
You can't blame them for shooting each other for looking cross-eyed at one another. Cause not having a culture based on "thug respect" is "acting white," dontcha know.
A culture where parents and kids almost NEVER having the same last name couldn't be problem, could it? I mean, having 7 kids by the age of 25 with 2 women while having no job is a great culture to have as the norm.
I could could go on, but we're really not supposed to point these things out nowadays.
Jayson,
ReplyDelete"But you can't talk about it. That would be racist."
With all due respect, you can get the f**k bent on that allegation, since Detroit's welfare state started back when it was as ofay as you please and LBJ was just some Texas cracker...
Yeah, Tam, maybe it did, but the fact is that you are talking about 50 years+ ago and Jay is talking about now - and the past 30 or so years under a democrat run spoils system.
ReplyDelete