Goin' to De-troit City

I just read the latest in the long line of articles on “what's wrong with Detroit”, and the theme is always the same. How did it happen that the home of the greatest industrial combine in world history – namely the American auto industry – has turned into a social and economic basket case, not only rivaling but beating places like Newark, Oakland, East L.A., the South Bronx, and Philadelphia? Detroit is generally acknowledged to be the worst of the worst – the James Buchanan of American cities. There may be other, smaller places that are equally wretched -- places like Flint, Michigan and Youngstown, Ohio -- but Detroit can claim to be the biggest and the baddest. And this process was well underway while the automakers were still at the top of their game; it has nothing to do with current economic woes. So how is it that such squalor has taken root in the belly of the industrial beast?

Here's an excerpt from the article, which might provide a clue: “The roots of Detroit's current plight go back decades. Court-ordered school busing and the 12th Street riots of 1967 accelerated an exodus of whites to the suburbs, and many middle-class blacks followed, shrinking the city's population from a peak of 1.8 million in the 1950s to half that now. About 83 percent of the current population is black. Detroit's crime, poverty, unemployment and school dropout rates are among the worst of any major U.S. city. Car and home insurance rates are high. Chain grocery stores are absent, forcing may Detroiters to rely on high-priced corner stores.”

Sounds like the ultimate picture of apathy and neglect on the part of the “establishment”, doesn't it? Not just apathy and neglect, but discrimination! “Hate”, even! How could a society that can put a man on the Moon allow a major urban area to fall into such ruin and decay? And mainly, why isn't something being done? Well, the fact of the matter is that something _was_ done, many years ago – it was called “urban renewal”, and it was accompanied by forced desegregation, as the article mentions, including the abomination of “court-ordered” (but whose idea was it? And why did the courts order it?) school busing. In short, the city was turned into, first, a reception station, and then a ghetto, for the black underclass, and it's no surprise to anyone with a functioning brain (although it continues to astonish liberals) that the reaction of whites – especially working-class ethnics, most of whom were Catholic – was to flee. (Fortunately, that was not, at that point, considered a “hate crime” -- just as evidence of ignorance and racism.)

This process has been explained in great detail in the definitive book on the subject, namely “The Slaughter of Cities” by E. Michael Jones of “Culture Wars”. The subtitle of the book is “Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing”, and his contention is that, far from an unanticipated consequence of urban renewal, what is called “white flight” was one of the main goals of the program. And why was this? In short, it's because the white ethnic Catholics constituted, for many years, a powerful – and socially conservative, despite their union and working class loyalties – voting block in many large cities, especially in the industrial Northeast, so they stood in the way of many of the liberal/socialist/utopian/"social change" programs that the Regime wanted to impose... on the country in general, but on cities first, since their populations were more “captive”, i.e. less self-sufficient and less able to push back against collectivist schemes, and more concentrated, i.e. easier to manipulate and intimidate. So it was basically a “divide and conquer” operation on the part of the Regime, with the shock troops being composed of the likes of Rev. King and the American Friends Service Committee. And think about it -- do suburban white ethnic Catholics, who have been scattered to the four winds, have any significant political clout these days? No. They are too dispersed, too co-opted, too deracinated. You can see this from voting statistics, which reflect a “Catholic vote” which is no different from the non-Catholic vote – which can be put another way: The “Catholic vote” no longer exists. Thus, one of the main reasons (albeit unstated) for “urban renewal” has been a complete success.

That's on the negative side. The positive side (for the Regime) was that, by packing the cities as full as possible with lower-class blacks (both the already-urban kind and the rural kind brought up from the South) a reliable voting bloc was created that would always be under the thumb of the liberals and would never be swayed by “conservative” or “capitalist” arguments or values. So you create a ghetto on the site of a formerly-thriving white neighborhood, teach the new residents to vote, tell them whom to vote for, chauffeur them to the polls (and add a little "walking-around money" as needed), and you have your permanent power base that is totally resistant to any other influences. And, at the same time, and in order to further perpetuate the situation, you aid and abet the spread and reinforcement of the “victimization and entitlement meme”, making certain that it metastasizes throughout the captive underclass. And you make sure that anyone who stands up and questions any of this is subject to social isolation, shunning, and censorship.

We see these processes happening every day in our inner cities; it's beyond obvious. The main question is which came first, the inner-city ghetto or the misery and exploitation that accompanies it. The political and media argument is that the misery is a product of the ghetto, and that the ghetto is, in turn, a product of white racism (as if there were any other kind). My point (and Jones', as I understand it) is that the chain of causality is more like this: The Regime saw an up-and-running political power base, i.e, the white ethnic Catholics, that would be naturally opposed (morally as well as socially) to their materialist, collectivist, utopian power schemes. Each side had taken the measure of the other, and neither liked what they saw – except the Regime was “wiser in its generation than the children of light.” So rather than engage in blatant ethnic cleansing, which might have set off a few alarm bells, they came up with a program called “urban renewal”, which destroyed the old neighborhoods with things like superhighways running right through the center of town, civic centers (now by and large fallen into disrepair and neglect), parking lots, and so on. And at the same time, they engaged in “blockbusting” as a forceful tactic to integrate those same neighborhoods, using by-and-large hapless black families as human shields. This, in turn, led to the decline in property values and an increase in crime, which, with the “race riots” that happened at about the same time (and who engineered those, I wonder?), led to “white flight”. And, the new occupants of the city were being groomed as the next political power base but kept in a state of relative helplessness and dependency because without those, the power base would not be so secure. And, as the article states, even middle-class blacks thought better of it and got out, leaving only the lowest of the low inhabiting our inner cities – a situation which persists to this day.

So the bottom line on places like Detroit is that the Regime, and particularly the wing of it known as the liberal establishment, should erect a huge banner across all major roadways leading into the blighted, crime-ridden areas: Mission Accomplished! These places have turned out exactly as intended. It was no accident. And all the attempts to “change” things are bound to fail, for the simple reason that no one really wants change; they're happy with things just the way they are. All of the ills of our cities are part of the program; nothing is random. So to bring real change – to really “do something” about the crime, squalor, substance abuse, broken families, unemployment, physical deterioration, filth, schools (especially the schools!) -- this just isn't on the agenda. Talking about it – endlessly and in politically and racially loaded terms – is very much on the agenda, but actually taking action is not. How do we know this? Because whenever anyone tries -- or even suggests something -- they get firmly slapped down by the "black leadership" and the political powers that be, reinforced by the media.

And it's astonishing, really, to think that all of this was done in plain sight; everyone could see that it wasn't working (i.e. the way it was supposed to) but the programs kept right on humming along, and still do. Forced busing is no longer part of the program for the simple reason that all the white families who were the targets of busing are gone. Riots aren't the problem they used to be because there is very little left to riot against – what are you going to do, burn down a vacant building or an empty lot? Militancy has been replaced by despair and resignation. Plus, the terms of engagement have morphed somewhat over the years. Black militancy reached a high water mark of sorts with the Black Panthers and their takeover of Oakland. But that was a bit too much for the Regime, which gradually reduced their ranks by means of police shootings, drug busts, "accidents", and so on. True black militancy has no place in this New Order – but simmering black resentment, anger, and hypersensitivity are just fine, so they're what get reinforced (as witness the current crop of demagogues who rode into power on Obama's coattails). Intact black families, which might be a source of a genuine increase in self-respect and prosperity, also have no place – so they are discouraged and punished by laws and regulations having to do with entitlements... not to mention the “War on Drugs”, which has a large number of black men who might otherwise be at home with wives and children in jail instead. And of course genuine physical health and safety have no place, which explains the poor medical care, the fast food joints, and the snail-like pace of law enforcement. On the other hand, drugs and alcohol, which are to inner-city blacks what games and circuses were to the Roman mob, are kept in plentiful supply. And black fertility? One word – abortion. Problem solved! (And as to chain grocery stores -- Pittsburgh has an answer to that one. They bribe the grocery firms to come back to the city and set up shop in the "ghetto", with profits guaranteed by the taxpayers!)

So yeah – it's not easy being black, when the Regime is bent on exploiting you for political gain, and where that exploitation involves your being kept in a permanent state of social, economic, and physical ill health. It's especially not easy when your own “leaders” are hard-core collaborators in this process, having been bought off by the white establishment years ago... and when they relentlessly persecute anyone – black or white – who sees through the scam and attempts to “tell it like it is”. And it's not easy when so many of your fellows are hooked on the sleazy entitlement culture, that saps away all pride, self-respect, and ambition... and when guns and drugs are easier to find than fresh lettuce. Who has the fortitude to stand alone against all of this? Who is going to walk into Detroit, the way Jonah walked into Nineveh, and expose the machinations of the Regime? But until someone does, “Motor City”, like so many others, is going to be set on permanent stall.

And I always think about how astonishing this must all be to foreigners. How did the great cities of America, of all places, get this way? It simply makes no sense that cities, which represent the highest material aspirations and achievements of mankind, have become its worst artifacts – things to be shunned and avoided, and finally pitied. But they don't understand the real agendas – the original one and the current one. Plus, their own cities are starting to melt down in some respects as well, due to things like uncontrolled immigration, pollution, crime, political corruption, religious/ethnic/racial strife, and their own versions of political correctness. So all the woes of cities don't have to be based on some evil plot – there are sufficient other reasons, based on perennial human failings, why cities go bad. But the history of cities in America, mainly since World War II, cannot be separated from the utopian impulse and the power madness of the establishment. They took what was working quite well, and had been for many generations, and made it a disaster area. And it happened, as I said, in plain sight, and with the full consent, and willing participation, of the courts, government at all levels, politicians, and the media. And the victims – both black and white – didn't know what was happening to them until it was too late... and in many cases, they don't know yet.

So yeah – the next time you read an article, or hear a broadcast, about the “deplorable conditions in our inner cities”, rest assured that if the powers that be had wanted to do anything about them, they would have – decades ago. As it is, they stand in defiance of not only the American narrative but of what we like to think are our core values. They are the cancerous lump on what is supposedly an otherwise healthy body, and that won't go away. And when you see such a blatant mismatch between our supposed goals and values, and the results – especially when it's so consistent and predictable from one place to the next – and especially when it involves the same “victim group” doing the same things, over and over again, the notion that it all “just happened” starts to look like a delusion. That's the point at which we need to ask – as very few do -- “who benefits?” And I think I've just provided at least part of the answer.