Recently, I read a novel set in Detroit, Michigan; or, rather, what little is left of a part of Detroit. This is an inner city core of ruins, abandoned buildings in various stages of collapse, home to the homeless, to the untended dying, to drug addicts and criminals, gang clubhouses, featuring broken windows, collapsing stairways, raw sewage, vermin. In short, it is an American shithole, and rivals any shithole in the world. And Detroit is not alone. In my own visit to Washington DC, I saw people living on the street, sleeping on park benches, homeless, destitute, and right outside the capital district. Upon a visit to a certain part of the city, my daughter told me to stay in the car and lock the doors. Yes, we have fabulous, “yuge” shitholes throughout the United States of America. We don’t feature them on TV. We don’t advertise them. But we do see the worst of other countries—scenes of war, victims of natural disaster—and we call those places shitholes. Or rather, our president calls them shitholes, and panders to his equally blind and ignorant base.
‘First remove the beam from your own eye, before taking the speck from your neighbor’s’.
No comments:
Post a Comment