Dan

Calabrese

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June 29, 2009

Detroit and Other Cities are Hell on Earth, and No One Has a Solution

Of all the problems on the nation’s agenda, none have hung around longer nor proven harder to solve than the deterioration of America’s cities. The next person to step forward with a workable solution for this disaster will be the first, but it’s not clear that we’re searching for a solution.

Most of us are just glad we don’t live in these long-forsaken places, even though they usurp state and federal revenues, tax law enforcement to the max and transform children who never had a chance into adults who will never do anything but leech onto the system until they die – at an old age if they’re lucky, at a young age if they’re luckier.

Take a good hard look at Detroit, if you think you can handle it.

As Monica Conyers, the president pro tem of the city council, now joins erstwhile Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in the category of convicted felons, it’s illustrative to take stock of just how bad things are in Detroit. The numbers begin to document what can really penetrate your soul only if you dare to go there and take a look around.

But we’ll breeze through a few of the numbers anyway.

Unemployment is an astonishing 22 percent, although, to be honest, it’s hard to imagine that 78 percent of the labor force there is gainfully employed.

The average home price is just over $18,000. There are houses you can buy for $100. Why you would want any of them, I have no idea, but you can. Perhaps they sell these homes to some of the 47 percent of Detroit adults who are functionally illiterate.

That’s right – 47 percent illiteracy. Among adults.

There is not a single major chain grocer within the city limits. The last one closed in 2007. Grand Rapids-based Meijer is now in talks to build a store at Woodward Ave. and Eight Mile Road – the absolute northern extremity of the city – perhaps in the hope that it can attract some suburban shoppers who will cross the street to buy their groceries. Good luck. Most suburbanites treat Eight Mile like the DMZ, and Detroit like North Korea. Even if you could get across safely, why would you want to?

In 2008, Detroit was the scene of 339 homicides, which amounts to 37.4 per 100,000 residents – the highest in the nation. And it is widely believed that Detroit police underreport the city’s murders.

Those are some of the stats. But you still don’t get it. Come to visit. Drive the neighborhoods. I don’t recommend you stop for the stop signs. Take in the burnt-out, boarded-up, abandoned houses that line the streets. After a while it seems redundant to keep asking yourself, “What the hell happened here?” Take pictures of the hulking, deteriorating buildings – the Fisher Body plant, the Michigan Central Depot.

Decide for yourself which analogy applies. Is it a war zone? A third-world slum? A post-apocalyptic remnant? There are arguments to be made for all of the above. The only thing that’s clear is that no one knows what to do – least of all the likes of Monica Conyers.

Conyers ostensibly adheres to some sort of radical black nationalist ideology, although my colleague David Livingstone – who is closer to the Detroit scene than I – tells me this is a clever ruse. The black nationalist thing makes her a hero among the people, but in truth Conyers’s only true ideology is a willingness to sell out absolutely anyone for the benefit of Monica Conyers.

Conyers’s most recent brush with infamy was in her action to kill the deal that would have saved Detroit’s Cobo Hall and Convention Center, and with it the North American/International Auto Show – one of the few remaining events that actually pumps serious money into the city’s economy. Conyers led council colleagues in killing the deal because it would have given over authority to the evil white suburbs. As a result, Detroit will likely lose the Auto Show entirely – unless Conyers’s departure heralds an opportunity for new Mayor Dave Bing to save the deal.

But that wouldn’t save the city. No one has any idea how to do that. From its peak of just over 2 million in population in the 1960s, Detroit today has barely 900,000 residents remaining. Just about everyone who could figure out how to leave has done so – leaving Detroit mostly with a population of illiterate, substance-addicted zombies, attending schools that teach nothing useful while school board members parade around town in chauffer-driven limousines.

If no other city in America has sunk to the depths of Detroit, many are nonetheless suffering terribly. Perhaps it is the inevitable result when everyone flees save for the most destitute, who in turn elect clowns to public office because the clowns can so easily fool them. And it’s certainly easy to blame it all on liberalism, as you won’t find many Republicans in places like this.

But Detroit is far beyond the point where tax cuts and supply-side economics are going to transform it. We thank God as Americans that we don’t live lives of constant fear and despair as they do in terrestrial hells like North Korea. But the fact of the matter is that some of us do, and no one knows how to fix it.

Someone needs to.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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