Ooh, there was a sickening crime in Detroit ...

[DetroitPlanner]

Seems to be true -- so what can we do as a society?

Fill the town with white hooligans?

[Detroitnerd]

Fill the town with white hooligans?

Hold out hope, DP: Opening Day is coming up.

[nain rouge]

I think you're on the right track. You've got to justify the long commutes and dreary, lifeless, gray, squat suburban environment somehow, and bashing Detroit is a great way to accomplish that. The idea that Detroit could have any culture or life frightens suburbanites because it confirms their worst fears, that life could be better, and that by screwing over Detroit they're actually screwing over their quality of life. They're the kind of people that vacation in big cities in America and abroad but associate everything bad with "the city" when they're back home. It's a constant state of denial that would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

[Gistok]

I think you're on the right track. You've got to justify the long commutes and dreary, lifeless, gray, squat suburban environment somehow, and bashing Detroit is a great way to accomplish that. The idea that Detroit could have any culture or life frightens suburbanites because it confirms their worst fears, that life could be better, and that by screwing over Detroit they're actually screwing over their quality of life. They're the kind of people that vacation in big cities in America and abroad but associate everything bad with "the city" when they're back home. It's a constant state of denial that would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

OK... did it ever occur to you that not every suburbanite is a knuckle dragging red neck who lives in a variation of a Russian Gulag?

You're not helping Detroitnerd's case about Detroit bashing, by displaying the exact same tendencies, but against the suburbs...

[Detroitnerd]

OK... did it ever occur to you that not every suburbanite is a knuckle dragging red neck who lives in a variation of a Russian Gulag?

You're not helping Detroitnerd's case about Detroit bashing, by displaying the exact same tendencies, but against the suburbs...

I don't know about that. I think a lot of the city's most articulate criticisms of the suburbs are well-founded, if only because many of the people who call the city home HAVE lived in the suburbs at one time or another and found it dreary. Which, you must admit, is a bit different from somebody like my fictional Frank Rizzo, who prides himself on not crossing Eight Mile Road in 25 years.

[coracle]

I guess the 1.2 million that have already left [[far more than have stayed), and counting, would prefer to be dreary. They certainly didn't want to live in Detroit; and they are real people not your fictional straw men trumped up to make disparaging points.

[Detroitnerd]

I guess the 1.2 million that have already left [[more than have stayed), and counting, would prefer to be dreary. They certainly didn't want to live in Detroit; and they are real people not your fictional straw men trumped up to make disparaging points.

Look who's all hurt and huffy...

[Lowell]

OK... did it ever occur to you that not every suburbanite is a knuckle dragging red neck who lives in a variation of a Russian Gulag?

You're not helping Detroitnerd's case about Detroit bashing, by displaying the exact same tendencies, but against the suburbs...

How about this?

Speak no evil of Detroit or of its suburbs.

Swallow the hurt and and turn that hurt energy toward mutually beneficial outcomes.

We get nowhere by tearing each other down except torn further apart.

[Vic01]

How about this?

Speak no evil of Detroit or of its suburbs.

Swallow the hurt and and turn that hurt energy toward mutually beneficial outcomes.

We get nowhere by tearing each other down except torn further apart.

Thanks, Lowell. The most sensible post in the thread...

[Dan Wesson]

This whole exercise was confusing at first and I didn't put forth the effort to find out why. But as more folk responded to the OP I find it becoming clearer.

The strawman, the censorship, the rose colored glasses but the fact remains one has to be diligent to ones surrounding or else become a statistic.