What do we imagine that people around the world think about [this disaster] when they see one of America’s most legendary cities, a capital of the Industrial Age and of 20th-century pop culture, reduced to poverty and decrepitude and dysfunction, compelled (in all likelihood) to strip away still more of its already minimal social services and break its promises to municipal retirees? Does that make us look like a wise and tolerant people, a people with any understanding or reverence for our real culture and history, as opposed to the mythological version? Does it make us look confident, or intelligent, or powerful? I don’t think so. I think the collapse of Detroit makes us look the way we looked after the national humiliation of Katrina: like a bitter, miserly and dying empire where the deluded rich cling to their McMansions and mock the suffering of the poor while everyone else fights over the scraps, and where the slow-acting poison of racism continues to work its bad magic.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 18:42:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015