Posted on 07/19/2013 10:26:39 PM PDT by neverdem
It took only six decades of “progressive” policies to bring a great city to its knees.
By the time Detroit declared bankruptcy, Americans were so inured to the throbbing dirge of Motown’s Greatest Hits — 40 percent of its streetlamps don’t work; 210 of its 317 public parks have been permanently closed; it takes an hour for police to respond to a 9-1-1 call; only a third of its ambulances are driveable; one-third of the city has been abandoned; the local realtor offers houses on sale for a buck and still finds no takers; etc., etc. — Americans were so inured that the formal confirmation of a great city’s downfall was greeted with little more than a fatalistic shrug.
But it shouldn’t be. To achieve this level of devastation, you usually have to be invaded by a foreign power. In the War of 1812, when Detroit was taken by a remarkably small number of British troops without a shot being fired, Michigan’s Governor Hull was said to have been panicked into surrender after drinking heavily. Two centuries later, after an almighty 50-year bender, the city surrendered to itself. The tunnel from Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, Michigan, is now a border between the First World and the Third World — or, if you prefer, the developed world and the post-developed world. To any American time-transported from the mid 20th century, the city’s implosion would be literally incredible: Were he to compare photographs of today’s Hiroshima with today’s Detroit, he would assume Japan won the Second World War after nuking Michigan. Detroit was the industrial powerhouse of America, the “arsenal of democracy,” and in 1960 the city with the highest per capita income in the land. Half a century on, Detroit’s population has fallen by two-thirds, and in terms of...
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
“Odd. It took close to 62 years for the Soviet Union to finally collapse. How long is a pyramid scheme’s shelf life?”
Astute observation.
I like Steyn’s work. Most of the time, his stuff is brilliant. But how do you write a story on the downfall of Detroit without ever once mentioning the, um, 800-pound gorilla in the room?
Outstanding observation.
>>Most public employees do. They get 5% 401K matches as well as pensions. In most states their pensions are also state tax free. And they almost always get free health care starting at 50 or 55. So you see, pensions are only the start.
Maybe that’s true in northern states. I am a public employee in Florida and I get NONE of those things. I’ve checked out the other municipal utilities in Florida and none of them get any of that. I’m sure that the rest of the south is the same.
Let China buy Detroit. They will be buying low.
What city is next to go broke?
My bet is on Chicago.
It seems that quite a bit of Detroit has migrated to Southfield. I've seen more of it in some of the other suburbs also.
The demise of old Cahokia is still something of a mystery. Present-day Cahokia, where I grew up, is rapidly going the way of Detroit.
But, to continue your analogy, you neglect them at your own peril.
More likely, St. Louis.
the predictable result of unions and liberals policy run amuck.
And the saddest part? Even now they still don’t blame those that caused it. Heck I wouldn’t be surprised if they blamed Bush. Liberalism is a mental disorder.
That’s what I did.
I have heard it called by other names, but I like Yellow Pages government. If you can find a service in the Yellow Pages, than farm out the government service to a private entity.
They crap in their own living room, and when the smell gets too bad, they find a nice clean one in which to start over.
Too bad you can’t ban them from leaving until they clean up the mess they made.
But given the state of our schools, where the “children” invoke their mob-rule rights against the teachers, I doubt any
of them has the knowledge to fix anything, or even the knowledge of the concept of fixing things.
Thank you for the post, neverdem, and the ping, JLS.
True, but there are so many aspects to the downfall, and one could certainly blame the same leftist mentality that created the aforementioned “800-pound gorilla.”
Maybe not for emergency services but for highway, sanitation, water, building and parks maintenance ect. It doesn’t necessarily need to be yellow pages government but contracts can be awarded by bids. The tremendous burden of all these salaries, pensions and medical benefits cannot be sustained by the taxpayers.
The reason we need to talk about Detroit is this is happening to other liberal cities. Corruption and graft have consequences...
After reading the whole article, Mark Steyn has carefully avoided specifically mentioning the gorilla for a reason. Racism.
In today's post-Trayvon political climate, Mark has to be assiduous in his dissertations NOT to overtly flay the gorilla. Even allusions to African nations and mentioning the names of former department heads in Detroit will be construed as code words for racist palaver. In other words, why mention that the sky appears blue or that the ocean seems wet?
Mr. Steyn has carefully delineated in his article many nuggets of truth that go beyond phenotype. These truths are brought forth to show what can be done to save any community or nation from the rot of terminal Detroit. As an example, this nugget is a red flag for any community wondering how far down the rabbit hole it has fallen:
"Forty-seven percent of adults are functionally illiterate, which is about the same rate as the Central African Republic, which at least has the excuse that it was ruled throughout the Seventies by a cannibal emperor. Why would any genuine innovator open a business in a Detroit “innovation hub”? Whom would you employ? The illiterates include a recent president of the school board, Otis Mathis, which doesn’t bode well for the potential work force a decade hence."
Why talk any more of the 800-pound gorilla when his hide is nailed to the wall behind you?
The only way detroit can be saved is for the entire population to first be purged.
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