In This Twilight

I just watched a documentary on Detroit. It's streaming on Netflix, if you are interested in it. It's called "Detropia", and if you have any sense, it will enrage you.

Basically the point of this documentary is to say Detroit is going/has gone downhill and the reason for it is rich people and their business. Or, presently, lack thereof. There are no jobs because the rich people took their businesses elsewhere. Whether it be out of the city, out of the state, or even out of the country. And it's the rich peoples' fault that Detroit is destitute and dilapidated. Crumbling. Literally and figuratively.

It follows people through their day to day. Pausing a frame here and there on a bird or a stray cat while soft, sometimes sad and wistful music drifts on in the background. It's supposed to make you feel sorry for Detroiters. It's supposed to make you pity them. Pan over to a rusted out building frame. Background noise is children playing in a place you'd never allow your children to play: In a hollowed out corpse of a former home. There is no narrator- The civilians they follow act as the vocal soundtrack. And the unanimous voices of Detroit have decided to place the blame everywhere else.

I'm not saying it's just Detroit's fault. I'm not saying it isn't, though, either.

There are several snippets of hippie like young adults constructing "art". These hippies met in Hawaii, and moved to Detroit because they thought they could make a difference. Make people see what money has done to Detroit. They attempt to convey this message by constructing a table in a field before an abandoned building, dressing themselves in suits and ties, and donning golden painted gas masks and goggles, sparkly gloves. They take a photo. "There, that'll show 'em." I had to ask my fiance with in the hell they were trying to convey in the first damn place! His reply:
"It symbolizes how rich people are making Detroit poor, and not caring. The goggles and gas masks are to show that they're alien-like, not human, because they're rich."

And that's when I got pissed. How many Detroiters do you know that have even visited Hawaii, let alone lived there? And I mean REAL Detroiters. People that have lived IN Detroit (Not a fucking suburb an hour away), people that work there. Who the hell do these people think they are?

A man bought a loft in the heart of Detroit because it's "What he could afford." A $25,000 loft. Can you afford to buy a loft or a house for $25,000 right now? Some of you might say yes. Most of you will say no. Because yes, it's a great price. But even that price is something that is unattainable to real Detroiters. I don't want to live there, but even if I did, 25k is just out of the question with my budget. And I have two jobs.

There was another 3-4 minute segment in a coffee shop. Two men from Switzerland are sightseeing. They came from Switzerland to Detroit, specifically. And when asked why, there reply was to the tune of:
"In Switzerland everything is so neat, clean, and new. We were drawn to Detroit because it's interesting to us with all of it's decay."

That's what brings tourists here. Not the museums. Not the history. The architecture, yes, but all the wrong kinds. The disintegrating columns, the still smoldering hobo fires started in the Packard Plant days before... People are coming from EUROPE to see just how in the fuck people live like this. Detroit is not a vacation spot. It's a goddamned circus. A sideshow.

Detroiters are mad, yes, as they should be. Their city is, indeed, dying. But all they are doing about it is calling town meetings to bitch about how Detroit is disappearing. They beg and plead not to downsize this, don't take this away, don't let this or that happen... Well, it's downsizing. Things are closing, being taken away. This. Is. Happening. Yet they believe if they scream at Mayor Bing long enough, he'll say something to the effect of "Psyche!! Just kidding! Here's all that money I was trying to say we didn't have. Here you go, have $20,000 and a tax break."

That just won't happen. And the fact that it's not getting handed right to them is downright pissing them off. Detroit isn't just broke. Detroit is in the red, worse than ever.  Please understand, I am generalizing. There are hard working citizens out there. There are people who are scraping everything they make just to move the hell out. Because it sucks there. Yes, the entire country is in a financial crisis, but I am in belief that many people are using that as an excuse to explain away the eyesore that is now "our city".

In any large city there will be large crime rate. So many people packed into a space. So much hustle and bustle. So many things happening...Detroit is far less policed than Chicago, and much poorer than Los Angeles. We have a very concentrated amount of unhappy people. And with our police force being so sparse, an unbelievable amount of crime goes without punishment.

I used to be proud to say I was from Detroit. The goddamned Motor City. My city. The city that "moved the world". I believe it was because 10 years ago it wasn't like this. And 10 years before that it wasn't even like how it was 10 years ago. I believe my parents sheltered my sisters and I to a degree when it came to the severity and reality of the impending doom that was descending upon my city. It started to get scary. Crime rate climbed, there were metal detectors in my elementary school. We weren't allowed to stay outside long enough for the streetlights to come on anymore. There were times at night where we would duck out of the way of windows, and huddle on the floor for an hour until the gunshots one block over subsided.

I don't know if anyone can correctly pinpoint just when we started to collapse, but it was surely not something that happened overnight. And I can tell you it's not just because "some rich people" relocated their businesses over time, or decided to fuck over this part of the state in particular. By now that poor city is so far gone, no one knows how long it will take to be, if it even can be, revived. Some people are putting forth an actual effort... But the majority of the people are just deciding to find someone else to blame, and hope that someone else will come clean it up for them.

Who wants to clean up a mess they didn't make?










Exactly.