The scene shifts from troubled to disastrous as one rides into town along any of the major corridors leading into the downtown area where the big, gleaming gambling casinos sit in isolated splendor hard on the shores of the muscular Detroit River. The first signs of the massive decay underway in the heart of the city are the abandoned, boarded up businesses. Soon after one crosses the city’s perimeter, they appear on both sides of the street in growing numbers. For block after block, they are interspersed with greasy spoon restaurants, junk dealers, second hand stores and down market pawnshops. Garbage and trash line the streets in heaps that are frequently shoulder high. Weed-filled lots are so common, and so grossly overgrown, that it is difficult to reject the notion that much of the city is returning to bush of the sort associated with the African outback. Excepting stores whose primary product is “beer and wine,” there is no commercial presence in many neighborhoods.

Moreover, the distressing truth is that in virtually every section of town, burned out hulks of abandoned buildings dominate the setting. They come in all shapes and sizes, many of them old, and once distinguished. In a way, the burned out hulks that tens of thousands of people used to call home, have come to symbolize contemporary Detroit. Their smell of old, rotting, wood permeates the air in many neighborhoods. But it is not the most pervasive odor in Detroit’s neighborhoods. That dubious honor belongs to the sagging hulks of the abandoned, burned out homes that litter the city’s neighborhoods. The hulks of the abandoned homes have their own distinctive smell. It is a cloying, acrid, oily odor that clings to the insides of one’s nostrils in a nauseating manner, reminding one with every breadth of the terrible tragedy unfolding across the length and breadth of the once proud, confident city.

Detroit still contains streets that would be considered attractive in most major U.S. cities. But virtually all of them are located within two or three blocks from rat-infested neighborhoods that reek of human misery of the sort historically synonymous with abject Third World poverty. The two words most useful in describing the scene are abandonment and decay. Moreover, every indication is that the neighborhoods where most Detroiters subsist are experiencing an escalating rate of decline and deterioration, represented most dramatically in the form of collapsing homes, institutions and infrastructure. This thoroughly demoralizing process includes all of the social pillars that typically anchor communities, and channel their aspirations for personal and communal achievement.

People speak in slow, measured voices when they discuss the devastating forces of destruction that dominate their lives. This is particularly the case when they are reminded of the large number of schools, churches, businesses, and social service agencies that have been boarded up and abandoned during recent years. Their sense of abandonment is palpable, and it has come to dominate their troubled perspectives of the future. It is difficult to reject the strong impression that many Detroiters are victims of a municipal version of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder of the sort associated with warfare. Given the plethora of financial, social and political crises they are enduring with no hope of substantive relief any time in the immediate future, it is relatively easy to understand why this might be the case.

In addition, Detroiters are experiencing substantial stress due to the large, and growing number of alcoholics and drug addicts moving into the tens of thousands of abandoned buildings located throughout the city. Down and out, with little or nothing to lose, members of these particularly desperate cohorts are frequent sources of deadly violence. As a result, many of the city’s beleaguered residents have become wary and withdrawn.
They have good reasons to be wary. Detroit consistently ranks as one of the highest crime rate cities in the U.S. For example, in 2007 Detroit was ranked sixth in the nation for violent crime in cities with populations exceeding 500,000 residents. There were 368 homicides in Detroit in 2008, making it the nation’s murder capital for cities with more than 500,000 residents.

Over the past quarter a century, the city has averaged approximately one murder per day. The fact that 65-70 percent of the city’s murders are associated with illegal drugs provides a rough sense of the death grip that narcotics have on residents. When two teenagers recently shot and wounded seven junior high school students waiting for a bus to take them home from summer school, none of the scores of people who witnessed the violent assault dared to publicly identify the perpetrators. Talking to the police about such matters can easily produce a street-level death sentence.

Much time, attention and fiscal resources have been devoted to upgrading the Detroit Police Department during the past two years, but to little avail. Detroit is still one of the most dangerous cities in the nation. Moreover, there is little indication that the situation will improve any time soon. Rape, robbery and burglary continue to be major problems in most sections of the city. Extremely violent drug syndicates dominate the streets and commons areas in many neighborhoods. And given the police department’s inadequate efforts to cope with the situation, citizens protect themselves, as best they can, in their homes behind bolted doors and barred windows.

Crime is, of course, only one of the myriad reasons why Detroit’s population is collapsing. Fed up with the danger and uncertainty engendered by the omnipresent threat of crime, hundreds of thousands of Detroiters have packed their belongings and decamped. This is particularly true of the city’s white residents, who have left in such large numbers that few of them are left. Nonetheless, it should be noted that whites are not alone in the abandonment of the city. Middle-class people from every racial group are participating in an escalating wave of out migration. Few subjects upset Detroiters more than the rate in which the city is hemorrhaging residents. In 1950, Detroit was booming and the future looked as if it would be endlessly bright.

At the time, Detroit had 1.9 million residents, making it the fourth largest city in the United States. But the postwar optimism, and booming economic progress engendered by the expanding automobile industry, began heading south by the onset of the 1960s. With the passage of each succeeding decade, conditions in the city worsened. The net result is that Detroit has lost more than half of its population. Current estimates indicate that the population is approximately 920,000. Approximately 1,200 residents per month are leaving, and Detroit is now the eleventh most populous city in the United States. Moreover, experts are predicting that the city will eventually lose at least 400,000 additional residents.

Given this, city and state official are preparing for the time in the not too distant future when Detroit is expected to collapse as a consolidated municipality. Some suggest that the city will shrink into a relatively small enclave centered on the downtown area. Others suggest that major portions of the city’s land will be returned to agriculture. As might be imagined, desperate future prospects of this sort are having a devastatingly depressive impact on property values. This past April, there were 6,259 foreclosures in the Detroit metropolitan area, one for every 303 housing units. Bank repossessed properties are being sold in bundles of 100 or more, with each house selling for less than $10,000. Seeking to profit from the city’s misery, buyers are flying in from afar to take advantage of perceived opportunities. They include newly wealthy entrepreneurs from and flush groups of buyers from locations as distant as California, Australia and China.

The city’s remaining residents know that they are enmeshed in the vortex of a collapsing financial system. More than one of every five municipal residents is unemployed. And tens of thousands more will lose their jobs in the immediate future due to the imploding automobile industry. Constrained by a precipitous downward trend in municipal revenues, largely due to the catastrophic exodus of tax paying residents, the municipal government is incapable of reversing the rate and scale of economic collapse. Although their finances are in somewhat better shape than Detroit’s, nearby county governments are incapable of providing appreciable financial assistance. And the state government is nearly bankrupt.

Although the Obama administration is providing financial assistance to the automobile industry, it has no plans to address the broad array of problems currently sucking life and vitality from Detroit, and the scores of nearby communities that depend on it for their own financial viability.
Most important, there are many good reasons to believe that Detroit’s decline will not prove to be unique. For example, two decades ago Michael Moore’s film “Roger and Me” focused attention on the desperate plight of residents in Flint, Michigan in the wake of the closure of local General Motor’s production plants. Flint has not recovered, and in the interim several other major Michigan cities have declined so precipitously that they are in danger of replicating Detroit’s tragic collapse.

Finally, there are many good reasons to believe that Detroit’s desperate plight will be replicated in other major industrial cities across the nation. While there is time to prepare, the nation’s leaders need to turn their attention to the endangered fate of urban, industrialized America. If nothing else, they need to understand that if they can’t save Detroit, and similarly situated American cities; there is little or no possibility that they will prove capable of saving far off targets of imperial hubris such as Baghdad and Kabul.

The current crises threatening stability in virtually every sector of U.S. society should be all the proof sane and balanced people need in order to understand that we are hovering on a precipice between extraordinary achievement, and dramatic, unalterable decline.  Given that, we all need to remain alert and aware regarding all the best things we can achieve, individually and together, as we move forward with great uncertainty, into a largely unknowable future.

We also need to think long and hard about the serious financial, social, spiritual and political crises that plague our society.  Permit me, if you will, to cite our escalating chronic homelessness problem in order to elaborate the point.  It has been obvious since the late 1960s that homelessness is a serious, debilitating national problem.  And since that time, the number of people involved has grown exponentially such that chronic homelessness is common in U.S. cities.

That is why it is commonly referred to these days as a chronic problem, in much the same manner as are prison recidivism, violent crime, and constant warfare of the sort required to maintain the U.S. Empire.  Our use of the term “chronic” in relation to homelessness is important because when we use we are more or less acknowledging that the problem has become a standard component of normal life here in the United States. Therefore, the term may also be interpreted to mean that at this point we accept widespread homelessness as a problem that probably will not be eliminated.

Whether this admittedly bleak interpretation of the term “chronic” in relation to homelessness is accurate or not, we are still faced with the thoroughly depressing fact that our efforts to cope with the problem over the past 40-odd yeas have been totally inadequate.  Despite the expenditure of billions of dollars, and the implementation of numerous local, state and national plans and programs designed to eliminate homelessness, it is arguably a larger, more persistent, problem today than it has been at any time since the Great Depression.

Given this ignoble record of abject failure, we obviously need to adopt comprehensive, new strategies based on different thinking.  My best sense is that the search for new and better ways to deal with chronic homelessness needs to take place within context of a broad, national dialogue about the kind of society we consider normal and appropriate.  We are not engaged in such a dialogue at this moment, but we desperately need to begin the process.

Some may allege, and rightly so, that the recent presidential election, was a step in the recommended direction.  Unfortunately, it is already apparent that it wasn’t sufficient. Even though the new administration is more liberal than the one it replaced, it is already clear that homelessness, and other serious social problems are not at the top of the Obama administration’s agenda.

In any event, much of the failure associated with our efforts over the decades to eliminate homelessness, and other serious social problems, is due to the fact that we do not possess anything even remotely resembling a coherent consensus regarding the characteristics and priorities of a healthy, normal society.  Given the absence of such a consensus, we are depending on an uncoordinated, haphazard, collection of inadequate services to deal with homeless. None of it is expected to actually eliminate homelessness, or any other serious social problem.

Moreover, far too many of us have come to believe that overall societal health can be achieved in the midst of massive squalor, and largely unrelieved suffering, by millions of our fellow citizens.  It can’t. And far too many of those who currently dominate public discourse pertinent to the nation’s best interests are committed to policies, priorities and traditional systems of privilege which ignore this fact.  One way or another, we are all required to pay dearly due to their ignorance and biases.

In any event, the recommended dialogue should include participation by citizens from every sector of society, and the consensus achieved should be used as the blueprint for establishing priorities and policies designed to eliminate every one of the nation’s chronic social problems, including homelessness.

One of the most important issues that should be addressed via the recommended dialogue is the destabilizing amount of wealth that people at the top rungs of our society have amassed during the past two decades.  That wealth, and the national priorities which have assisted its accumulation, is inextricably linked to chronic homelessness, and other forms of endemic poverty experienced by millions of U.S. citizens.  Steps clearly need to be taken that facilitate a coherent, reasonable, and effective redistribution of wealth in ways that provide substantive economic enhancement of the lives of those at the bottom of our economic pyramid.

I am not advocating class warfare, nor am I interested in demonizing those who are “filthy rich.”  Wealthy people are not the problem; they are simply the beneficiaries of an economic system, which provides them more affirmative economic assistance than is good for the nation as a whole.

Healthy, appropriately balanced, societies provide employment options sufficient to make it possible for their citizens to live honorable lives via employment in meaningful jobs.   Healthy societies also provide comprehensive, social safety nets for citizens who are unable to work in order to ensure that they do not end up homeless and destitute. The fact that we will need to enact major reforms in order to meet these obviously minimal standards is indicative of the degraded nature of our social order.

In any event, in order to close the gap between the situation in which we currently find ourselves, and the one we must create in order to acquire a healthy, balanced social order, we will need to place more emphasis on human beings, and less on economic fixes designed to protect the wealth and privileges of the nation’s elites.

Unfortunately, there are few indications at this point that those who dominate the nation’s political and economic affairs are thinking in the ways necessary for us to implement appropriate reforms.

Moreover, there are even fewer indications that most of the nation’s political leaders are willing to acknowledge that absent the implementation of major social, political and economic reforms, a huge segment of the current middle class will become more personally familiar with chronic homelessness than most of them ever imagined.

As indicated above, we are in dire need of a massive makeover, and the sooner we get about the business of implementing one, the better off every single one of us will be.  Without such a fundamental reformation of the nation’s social, economic and political trajectory, we will almost certainly continue our precipitous slide toward the dark side of the abyss.

These are portentous times for the United States. There are many things to be grateful for, including the current ascendancy of mainstream liberal politics in the nation’s capitol.  The stock market is slowly edging upwards, and panic about the possibility of total financial collapse appears to be subsiding.      

The Obama administration is setting a new course for the nation in many important areas, including its admirable commitment to functioning within the letter and spirit of international laws pertinent to the treatment of prisoners of war.  Given these developments, the public remains broadly optimistic regarding the inspiring new president’s chances for overall success.  As a result, President Obama is receiving strong support across the political spectrum.

Nonetheless, there is tremendous unease throughout the land.  People from all walks of life, and from every section of the nation, are deeply frightened about what the future may hold.   The millions of people who have lost their jobs during the past two years due to the global financial collapse are prominent sources of that fear.  The tens of millions of homeowners who are proving incapable of making their mortgage payments are additional sources of fear.  Bank foreclosures, short sales, and families being evicted in unprecedented numbers, add to the pervasive sense that the economic system that has sustained so many for so long is in decline, if not undergoing a comprehensive, slow motion collapse.

Fear is also being engendered by the staggering amount of money lost during the past couple years in savings, investments, and overall financial viability.  The domino-like collapse of major industries, financial institutions, and corporations that have historically served as bedrocks of the economy, and the so-called” American-Way-of-Life,” is engendering additional fear. The hundreds of thousands of people being thrown out of work each month because of the shrinking national economy only serve to increase the conviction, which is shared by many, that, as Chinua Achebe surmised, things are falling apart.   

Homeless people, proliferating shantytowns, street side beggars, soup kitchens, and senior citizens scavenging bottles and cans from trash bins are among the most obvious signs that there is real basis for being afraid. Moreover, such broadly dispersed, chronic misery, suffering and desperation are undeniable evidence indeed that something is terribly amiss in our society.

As indicated above, the Obama administration is doing its best to cope coherently with the broad array of crises it inherited from the largely discredited group of torturers, clueless ideologues, and fiscally irresponsible dunces who dominated the federal government during the eight-year reign of its predecessors.  Unfortunately, most indications up to this point are that the Obama administration is committed to salvaging as much of the pre-recession financial system as possible.  Thus, they are trying to resuscitate a system that was in many ways criminally inadequate long before the onset of the current recession.

Liberals are currently expending much time and resources in their effort to get the new administration to adopt a social agenda, and an economic strategy, that will eliminate many of the most egregious shortcomings and abuses of the largely discredited Bush administration.  In order to accomplish these goals, Liberals often assert that President Obama should emulate Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Thus, they are advocating the implementation of social safety net programs of the sort that came to be known during Roosevelt’s era as the “New Deal.”

We desperately need such programs, and if they are established, much of the gratuitous suffering which poor people are routinely subjected to in this still extremely wealthy society can be substantially mitigated.  Thus, there are many good arguments to be made in favor of the agenda being advocated by Liberals during this period of fear and desperation. 

But I am firmly convinced that the Liberal agenda will ultimately prove inadequate.  This is primarily due to the fact that it does not adequately address the most important sources of the nation’s current economic collapse.  The most important shortcoming of the current Liberal agenda for change is that it generally disregards the crippling impact of the monstrously expensive global empire currently administered by the U.S. government.

Given this, my best sense is that the Obama team will best serve the nation’s long term best interests if they begin to devote less attention to FDR’s reforms and more to those embraced by Mikhail Gorbachev at the time he realized that the Soviet Union was undergoing a slow motion collapse of the sort currently underway here in the United States. 

The desperation exuding from experts regarding the current “global financial crisis” does not bode well for the immediate future.  All the most important signals from Washington, D.C., London, Paris, Moscow, New Delhi, Tokyo and Beijing confirm my firm impression that the “wise men” in charge of the world’s financial affairs are fast running out of good ideas regarding measures which can, or should, be implemented to halt the meltdown, and hopefully, engender some sort of recovery, however modest. 

Furthermore, close examination of the blizzard of proposals being touted as partial solutions to the escalating crisis, rather quickly reveals the fact that there is little unity of opinion among the most prominent spokespersons about what should be done, by whom, and in what manner.  Thus, it should not be surprising that the recent assemblage of financial dignitaries at the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland accomplished little beyond clarification of the increasingly obvious fact that the current financial crisis is so large, complex and opaque, that few, if any, individuals possess the faintest notion of what it will take to end it.  The vast, negative ramifications of this unpleasant fact are quite probably responsible for the increasingly worried commentary about the financial crisis being provided by President Barack Obama.

As far as ramifications are concerned, I am moved to recall an experience I had two decades ago while traveling upriver from Paramaribo, Suriname in a leaking, handmade, wooden boat.   Coffee brown river water swirled strongly on both sides of the creaking craft are it chugged upriver, away from the faded, old city, and ever deeper into the jungle.  Within less than an hour, each side of the river was covered with lush vegetation, and there were few signs that any human beings had ever ventured into the territory.

But the pristine scenery abruptly changed after two hours when we entered an almost surreal section of the winding river that extended for several miles.   Stretched one after another along the alligator inhabited banks on both sides of the river were ancient hulks of former plantation estates.  In most cases, little was left standing but a partial wall, or tilted chimney.  Remnants of a few grand mansions stood out among the trees.  There were also scattered remnants of barns and out buildings, all of which were being slowly but surely engulfed by the profuse vegetation which covered everything but the swift river’s flowing water.

Rotting piers hanging precariously over the river from decaying foundations, were all that remained of many of the completely deserted estates, which collapsed during the 19^th century due to a global recession that destroyed the sugar market.  I remember being stunned at the time by the incredible magnitude of vast destruction produced by massive, global recessions.  My memories of that scene lead me to wonder today whether equally devastating collapses will occur in our immediate future.

The team that President Obama has assembled to engineer economic recovery for the U.S. is composed of experienced, highly intelligent people, who may prove equal to the task before them.  But my strong impression is that they are not prepared to think in the new ways that will inevitably be required for the United States to make the very best of this particularly bad situation.  

More to come…