This is not Pripyat.
This is not a "black thing" or a "white thing." This is not a "rich thing" or "poor thing."
This is a pride thing. A damning illustration of what happens in its absence.
This is not the federal government's fault. This is not the state government's fault.
This, Detroit, is your fault.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Holy shit. It's Starnesville.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, this is what they want for everyone. Somehow they have the gall to call it compassion. What the hell is wrong with these people? Oh yeah, they're Necromongers.
Oh, well isn't this just precious.
ReplyDeleteGrocery stores are closing in Detroit. All of them, apparently. Customers don't feel safe shopping there and owners don't feel safe doing business there. Remaining residents have the choice of either going out to the suburbs (this assumes they have a car), or buying groceries at convenience stores (selection limited to basic consumables and junk food).
And who's doing something about this problem? Who's out there taking proactive measures? Who will rise up on behalf of the people and bravely face down the onrushing freight train of stagnation and decay?
Guess.
ACORN has been picketing stores it contends have been selling expired meats and unhealthy foods.
"We have problems with meat and produce being expired," Hollins said. "We have no security in the parking lots, no restrooms in the stores and a poor selection of food products. When you cross Eight Mile, these problems all disappear. The poor folks, who don't have transportation to the suburbs to shop, are being taken advantage of."
Well thank goodness, ACORN's on the case.
Maybe they can't be bothered to do something about actually improving the community - something that might reduce crime, encouraging businesses to return to the area voluntarily, give people choices, maybe provide a few jobs - but they can wave signs around and demonize the Circle-K casher with a package of week-off salami slices in the cooler.
Gordon Alexander, 52, who lives on the city's east side, said suburbanites have it good compared to Detroiters.
Oh, those suburbanites. They just don't appreciate how lucky they are. Why, they could stop mowing their lawns, park shelled-out beaters in every yard and on every curb, ransack local buildings for copper and leave the rest open to the elements, and invest their entire earnings in accessories that make their cars less mechanically sound, but much much flashier.
They could, but they don't. I wonder why that is, Gordo?
"There is only one store in the city I'll pick up some stuff at, but my kids jokingly call it the 'ghetto store' because everything is subpar," he said. "Some of these stores make the argument that they are catering to black clientele, so they have to make room to carry stuff like ham hocks and chitterlings, but that's just an excuse for bad quality.
Gordo knows that these few remaining stores must surely be hanging on by the quick of their nails, and that tailoring what stock they can afford to cater precisely to the whims of their customers is all that stands between solvency and one more empty street corner of boarded-up windows.
But none of that matters, because Gordo doesn't have easy access to asiago and arugula. Fortunately, Gordo has trained his offspring to recognize the 'ghetto' for what it is. Perhaps this will be the basis for a desire to escape that ghetto by any means, maybe even attention to their studies and hard work at whatever job they can find. Maybe a job in the suburbs, at a grocery store.
Or maybe professional sports and street pharmacy.
Starnesville, indeed.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI seem to have commented there, rather than here, and then hashed it here. Geez. Pre-coffee is a pain, and I gotta finish getting off the stuff. But the pith of my observation, which I noted at the article's source, is this:
ReplyDeleteThe pointless, horrible decline described by Hammer and Apotheosis is an example of orcish behavior. Once I'm back on the writer's horse I'll elucidate. But it's all there in the LoTR appendices. Tolkien didn't invent orcs, he just observed them.
Great point, John. Wow. Maybe Starnesville is a town in Mordor?
ReplyDeleteI don't have time to hunt down the link, but did any of you read a few months back about Obama's plan to revert back to dirt roads in some of these Michigan towns? That's what really clubbed me over the head with the Starnesville imagery. I thought Dagny & Hank's trip there was a particularly chilling part of Atlas Shrugged. People just existing with no purpose while the remnants of what used to be civilization rot around them. I remember thinking when I read it just last fall, "That couldn't happen...could it?" Democrat president, Democrat congress and a heavily Democrat state and city, but somehow everything is the fault of the "suburbanites".
Btw: relevant reading: Black Rednecks & White Liberals by Thomas Sowell.
I wonder what someone living there might have to say about the subject of pride.
ReplyDeleteAre they waiting for someone to "give" them pride? That seems to be the stated purpose of numerous community- or race-specific organizations. Giving people pride. Putting people on notice that they should be proud of who they are. You can be proud because we told you to be proud.
What an offensive load of garbage.
Nobody can give you pride, and only a fool who knew nothing about pride would depend on someone else to provide it. Pride comes only from the earned, not the given and not the taken. What's given to you is, necessarily, the product of someone else's labor, or creativity, or talent, or effort; and therefore their pride, not yours. It is not a transferable commodity.
Until we start teaching people where pride really comes from - true pride, earned pride, not that throwaway facade tossed out indiscriminately, like clowns chucking handfuls of tootsie rolls along a parade route - this decline will continue. Those rats who fouled their own nest past its ability to sustain them, driving them out into new ranges, will not suddenly become hamsters when they reach the borders of their wasteland. And thus will the wasteland expand.
Tolkien didn't invent orcs, he just observed them.
ReplyDeleteI like this.
That's how the left works, though. It's all insolvent, contradictory bullshit. Look at anywhere they've had a stranglehold on power for decades. I'll bet it will either be somewhere like billionaire's row in San Francisco or the ghettos in Detroit. There isn't any middle ground because there isn't any middle class, which is how they like it. These ghettos come from the same blueprint as the national debt and they are even literally related since much of our deficit spending is devoted to prolonging the malignant tumor of welfare.
ReplyDeleteLet's print more money until we can't print any more. Let's borrow until we can't borrow any more. Let's spread the destitute, welfare culture until it runs out of room to spread. Then they all sit around and look at each other in disbelief when their tax revenues falls. Their solution? Increase taxes and entitlement spending! It doesn't make any sense, it can't possibly work, but it's apparently all they know how to do.
I hope my Atlas Shrugged references aren't growing tiresome, but I can't help that everything the left does reminds me of a different scene in that book. It's almost like your favorite iPhone slogan "There's an app for that". Is there some leftist dressing up failed Marxist policies as something new? There's a scene in A.S. for that. There the government was chasing after people like John Galt because they had a "duty" to give their ability and their work to the state for the betterment of the society. People had a right to receive what Galt could produce for them because they weren't as smart as him and if he profited from his genius he would be taking advantage of the less fortunate. Here in real life people are demanding that someone come back into the ghetto to sell them food, even though they probably don't have any money to pay for it other than what the government thieves from the evil suburbanites. Maybe they should draft the suburbanite children to work in the ghetto stores? Wouldn't that be great for community service? After all, they're only suburbanites because they somehow oppress everyone in the ghetto, right?
I had a teacher in college bemoan the fact that if you go into a chain grocery store in a suburb and then another one in the ghetto, the one in the ghetto will have a much larger stock of things like liquor and cigarettes. His point was that the people in the ghetto are having these vices inflicted upon them by the stores selling more of these bad things. So the poor people are going into the stores to buy Lean Cuisines, goat cheese and vegetables but then pass by a gigantic liquor display and are like, "WOAH! There is so much alchol here! I am compelled to buy and drink large quantities of it instead of buy groceries simply because it's here!" Then the store owners high-five each other while watching on hidden camera. So that's true, but it's nutty to suggest that Obama is a socialist, right?
Maybe Starnesville is a town in Mordor?
ReplyDeleteMordor is a land ravaged by industrial waste and depleted resources, ruled by an uncaring and self-serving power, populated with hopeless, misguided and unpleasant beings, and generally avoided by people who refer to themselves as "free people."
Could be.
I didn't have anything interesting to say about this until I happened on this post:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.alarmingnews.com/archives/008351.html
I wasn't familiar with the notion of "locus of control." It sounds like an idea that could be useful. It's certainly been useful to the Enemy.
I was going to do something like this, but the People's Cube beat me to it:
ReplyDeletehttp://thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=3927
"I hope my Atlas Shrugged references aren't growing tiresome"
ReplyDeleteIf you can keep brining Ayn Rand to the table without becoming a shrill, parroting asshole, you're a miracle. Seriously.
Can't make any promises on the asshole part, but the shrill parroting is definitely what I'm trying to avoid.
ReplyDelete