Detroit is just one of many cities and states going down the tubes, compliments of a thoroughly rigged economy and criminal bankers and politicians.
It's vital to see the neoliberal/neoconservative experiment in context. American history (especially since WWII) has been increasingly a reach for more and more international dominance, leading finally to the modern "neo" movement since 1980, which seeks permanent Americanization and globalization of the world's economy. Why? Because we can. Because our wealthiest citizens profit from it. Because we have had the resources and manpower to go a viking, so we did.
The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 is the great grandfather of the Cheney 1% Doctrine of 2001 -- preemptive war on any nation that even hints at challenging our empire.
Our empire building has been based, until recent decades, on stripping the resources and wealth of overseas nations. That process has now matured to its natural physical limits. The planet's resources have been thoroughly explored and taken. It's getting harder every day to get the raw materials we need. We approach the point where landfills from decades past are some of the richest sources of the materials we need for our daily lives.
It's also vital to see that this mad lust for global empire is doomed to failure by the natural laws of physics and biology. There is no chance that a consumer society based on American-style appetites can even continue as is on this planet, much less expand to every continent. The planetary resources simply aren't there. Our oceans, atmosphere and soil are already visibly collapsing under the duress of what we currently consume and throw away. Our bees are dying from the witches brew of chemicals we lace our farms with to whip them into hyper production of food lacking in essential minerals and nutrients. When the bees go, a lot of our food will go away, too.
Like the bees, Detroit matters. When entire American cities are, like failed states overseas, abandoned to the predations of the banks and elites who already own and hoard two-thirds of all monies, assets and property in America, it is the Third Act of our American play. Now comes the climax and conclusion of our story:
In order to maintain an active and expanding military theater on every continent, in order to build and grow a total global surveillance apparatus, in order to keep the American dollar the world's dominant reserve currency, in order to keep the US military machine going as the largest industrial user of oil on the planet, all the furniture in the American domestic economy now has to be splintered and burned in the fires of empire. That's the closing scene of the American dream.
The result is that fully 80% of adult Americans now live in poverty or near-poverty, with less and less assurance of sufficient shelter, nutrition, education and medical care to live decently, much less pursue careers or creativity. Everything is subject to sacrifice on the altar of our overseas empire. Social Security is no part of the budget deficit caused by multiple aggressive wars in a time of lowering taxes and unlimited bailouts to foreign and domestic banks. It's a separate, self-contained insurance fund. Yet Social Security is going on the chopping block before 2016, if Obama carries out what his masters expect of him. It will be just another pension fund robbed of its contents by Wall Street's greed. Medicare will be hollowed out and turned into a shrinking annual coupon if we do not stop it from happening.
None of this destruction of America's middle class is by happenstance. The resources are needed for empire, and will be taken -- if we allow it.
Who wants this global policing of the planet at any price?
Who wants this military/economic empire no matter the cost?
Our financial elites do. Our military industrial machine does. Our bought and paid for politicians do. They have collectively become an international class of predatory financiers and mercenaries chasing fiat profits anywhere available, buying governments wholesale and stripping nations of their resources and treasures to pay usury on the debts they put them into. All to stuff more paper wealth into offshore accounts where it does nothing but commit incest upon itself. So what if their pile grows larger by the minute? Whom does it help? Not even the people who own it. It just gets larger because it can.
This globalization process by our wealthy, inflicted on other nations by America for so long, has now necessarily come home to America's domestic population, a population viewed by our elites as mere cattle to be harvested of their productivity and lives as needed. A population under deep surveillance because they are the enemy now, they are criminals who won't work for pennies or pay their medical bills, they are terrorists who could rise up and take back the money and power at any time. They must be stopped, they must be kept in line, they must be made to live in fear, divided and conquered and fed on scraps.
But the neo dreams can't last. They are too large for life. When an empire hits nature's physical limits to endless growth, it stops growing. Debts that can't be paid won't be paid, and this planet owes no debt to the wealthiest one percent. They are a sickness upon the earth that cannot be sustained. So they won't make it. That's nature.
When empires can no longer expand, historically they go into decline, and usually it's a rapid decline. The easiest assets to strip and steal at this end stage are its own population's labor and possessions, which are quickly seized and burned in the final orgy of trying to maintain foreign hegemony before things fall apart of their own accord.
Know that what we let our elites do to Detroit now will be done to our street, our neighborhood, our homes and our families in turn. There is no reason to think you will be spared.
It is time to change course. Our house is on fire.
It is time to demand an end to overseas empire, a return to our own shores, and a united effort to rebuild our own nation before conquering all the others. It is time to disavow the Cheney Doctrine and aggressive war as a means of progress. There is no progress there except for Dick Cheney and his ilk.
It's time to refocus our national goals toward becoming genuine leaders of mankind, to finding new ways into a sustainable future for all humanity. Why let endless wars be our last gasp? Why let ourselves go down in history as a people who used up everything they had and then burned down their own nation trying to force the whole world to make our richest citizens ever richer? There is no such thing as enough for these people, but there is a point where enough is enough for us.
We're there.
Let's start with Detroit. And then let's become a nation to admire.