A Detroit News columnist says both parties' presidential candidates make Michigan an afterthought:
Who, exactly, in that crowd is worried about leaving behind Michigan, which has more unemployed citizens (370,000) than Iowa sent to its caucuses (334,000) last week?You want a fat slice of America, its domestic problems distilled, come to the Big Mitten. We've got them all -- highest unemployment, lowest job creation, imploding public finances, steadily declining home values, rising foreclosures, a dysfunctional governor and Legislature, the poorest major city in America and a major job-providing sector wrestling with a massive domestic restructuring and global expansion at the same time.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
I have met several people from Michigan who have moved down South to work in the new auto plants. They have all said how suprised they were at how much they like living in Dixie.....as they pull their golf clubs out of their trunks in 60 degree weather in January.
I live in Detroit proper and despite ourselves the city is beginning to see positive results from the type of urban re-development that has renewed other older, industrial cities like Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore. But it's drop in the bucket stuff.
Michiganders are way behind the curve in terms of adapting to the massive economic shifts that have been taking place globally for a quarter of a century. Daniel Howes column sadly bleets out the same tired auto industry line about emissions standards and other environmental reform. Michigan's infrastructure has been ignored really since Milliken administration. A stagnant population and never-ending sprawl stretches our state's resources to their limit. Our higher education system, while outstanding, is becoming more and more cost prohibitive for regular people. Sadly anything to address this last issue is a non-starter.
There is a real culture of anti-intellectualism in Michigan that politics can't address. Our collective identity is too connected to getting a good job on the line right out of high school. "I don't have a fancy education but, unlike them pointy headed college boys, I sure as sh&t know how to change my oil and shoot a deer" is an attitude that permeates Michigan's culture much to our determent.
I don't believe any Presidential candidate can help a Michigan that seems so unwilling to help itself. The attitudes in Daniel Howes column are a major part of Michigan's problem.
We can't ignore Michigan! If we did, who would people in Wisconsin have to make jokes about?
I lived there a few years ago. One thing that struck me was the indifference to old things. An old tree. An old house. An old piece of furniture. Yuk. Broom it. That something was worthy of esteem simply because it had been around for a long time didn't seem to resonate. Perhaps this mentality might explain why for decades Detroit turned out lousy cars that fell apart after a few years. Oriental cultures on the other hand revere the aged, and so they build cars that don't die young.
Be that as it may, 150 years ago Maine was the Detroit of the Clipper Ship. If it doesn't get its act together, and it probably won't, Michigan will become the Maine of the gasoline powered automobile.
My two cents.
I grew up in Michigan, and I love it there. The Michigan landscape has a unique beauty that I'm glad more people don't appreciate, because then you'd all want to move there, and I'd just as soon most of you didn't. All the comments about how Michigan people are no good reminded me of that old story about the man who moves to a new town. Anxious about acclimating to the new environment, he asks an old-timer what the people there are like. "Well, sonny," says the old guy, "what were the people like where you came from?" "Oh, they were wonderful," the man says, his eyes misting up a little. "I left some of the best people in the world back in my home town." "I think you'll find they're much the same here, once you get to know them," the old man says. Along comes another newcomer, and also seeks advice from the old man, who asks him the same question. "The people in my home town?" the newcomer says. "What a bunch of losers! Stupid, stingy, mean--I couldn't stand them. Why do you think I left?" The old man sighs. "Well, I guess you'll find the people in our town are pretty similar," he says.
The point of this story being that much depends on the eye of the beholder. Look upon people with the eyes of love and you will find many good qualities hidden by their surface flaws. Look upon them with suspicion and dislike and you will find yourself easily able to brush away any apparent virtues to uncover their true inferiority.
And by the way . . . THEY CAN'T HAVE OUR WATER. I will go back to Michigan, job or no job, and assume a defensive posture, if those outlanders try to suck up the Great Lakes.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.