Fromn Jalopnik: "How The Ruins Of Detroit Are A Warning For America"
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http://ganja.gawkerassets.com/assets...tor_roller.gifHow The Ruins Of Detroit Are A Warning For America
Charlie LeDuff
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18db...jpg/medium.jpgI REACHED DOWN the pant cuff with the eraser end of my pencil and poked it. Frozen solid. But definitely human.
"Goddamn."
I took a deep breath through my cigarette. I didn't want to use my nose. It was late January, the air scorching cold. The snow was falling sideways as it usually did in Detroit this time of year. The dead man was encased in at least four feet of ice at the bottom of a defunct elevator shaft in an abandoned building. But still, there was no telling what the stink might be like.
In most cities, a death scene like this would be considered remarkable, mind-blowing, horrifying. But not here. Something had happened in Detroit while I was away.
First words from an op-ed by Charlie LeDuff and no doubt this was a discription of that unfortunate homeless guy that was found in the Roosevelt Building near MCS, or a story quite like it, and which photo was etched in my memory. And I don't want to see it again....
This story evolves into a journalist returning to his roots, the land he grew up from. And how Detroit was abandoned by America, until 2008, when the big three went to Washington to beg for support. And suddenly he's in the epicenter of a story where he sees journalists from all over the world decending onto his city, all of whome come to the the conclusion that Detroit is a mess.
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And it is awful here, there is no other way to say it. But I believe that Detroit is America's city. It was the vanguard of our way up, just as it is the vanguard of our way down. And one hopes the vanguard of our way up again. Detroit is Pax Americana. The birthplace of mass production, the automobile, the cement road, the refrigerator, frozen peas, high-paid blue-collar jobs, home ownership and credit on a mass scale. America's way of life was built here.
A very sobering story and the writer comes to this conclusion.
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At the end of the day, the Detroiter may be the most important American there is because no one knows better than he that we're all standing at the edge of the shaft.
Link.
