This is a neat article from The Atlantic which compares the Detroit Donald Trump projected to the world at his rally to Detroit as it actually is.
The article covers Trump’s rally in Detroit, and how Trump took cheap, and arguably racist, shots at the city. Trump’s idea of Detroit of being a crime-ridden hellhole ignores much about the modern state of Detroit. This is, for example, Detroit’s safest year since 1966. It also ignores that Michigan Central Station – a massive, beaux-arts style train station designed by the same architects as NYC’s Grand Central Station – is a ruin no more. The city’s skyline has also grown with the addition of Hudson’s Tower. It also excludes the fact the city’s home prices are rising, and that the city is optimistic about its future for once. It even dismisses the fact that, for the first time since 1957, Detroit’s population grew.
There are, of course, still obstacles. The city still has a high crime rate, poor schools, and racial inequality. Though it remains economically significant, it is unlikely the city will command the title of “Engine of America” the way it once did.
But that does not change that the Detroit Trump spoke of is one that arguably no longer exists, or at the very least is disappearing. Detroit is improving, and Donald Trump has nothing to do with it.
Overall, this article uses Detroit as a parallel for the United States as a whole. Does the America conservatives criticize exist as they see it? Is the past they yearn for really as good as they imagine it? In my opinion, both of those answers are “No.”
This is a neat article from The Atlantic which compares the Detroit Donald Trump projected to the world at his rally to Detroit as it actually is.
The article covers Trump’s rally in Detroit, and how Trump took cheap, and arguably racist, shots at the city. Trump’s idea of Detroit of being a crime-ridden hellhole ignores much about the modern state of Detroit. This is, for example, Detroit’s safest year since 1966. It also ignores that Michigan Central Station – a massive, beaux-arts style train station designed by the same architects as NYC’s Grand Central Station – is a ruin no more. The city’s skyline has also grown with the addition of Hudson’s Tower. It also excludes the fact the city’s home prices are rising, and that the city is optimistic about its future for once. It even dismisses the fact that, for the first time since 1957, Detroit’s population grew.
There are, of course, still obstacles. The city still has a high crime rate, poor schools, and racial inequality. Though it remains economically significant, it is unlikely the city will command the title of “Engine of America” the way it once did.
But that does not change that the Detroit Trump spoke of is one that arguably no longer exists, or at the very least is disappearing. Detroit is improving, and Donald Trump has nothing to do with it.
Overall, this article uses Detroit as a parallel for the United States as a whole. Does the America conservatives criticize exist as they see it? Is the past they yearn for really as good as they imagine it? In my opinion, both of those answers are “No.”