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Detroit is a picture for whatever the observer wants to blame for the failings of American cities, blacks, the American Dream, etc. Cons can blame liberal dominance. Race realists can blame majority black rule. Libs can blame big business for leaving the city. They all seem to avoid blaming the entire system of democratic rule and the bureaucracy that exists in western republics today. Detroit has an illiteracy rate of 3rd world proportions, yet they all can vote. Their chosen leaders end up shakingdown anyone for money while screwing over teh citizens they are suppose to govern. Because each side has something to point at and blame, no one mentions the unmentionable. Democracy sucks. Oh, and Detroit was practically the entire vote margin of Obama’s win in Michigan.
Well, the counterargument is that there are plenty of places which have been functioning ok under Democracy (at least the local implementation thereof) and even Bureaucracy-heavy Liberalism for a long time without coming anywhere near Detroit’s situation. Some of those places are, actually, within spitting distance of Detroit (basically the leftist-tending Scandinavian-heavy portions of the upper Midwest, full of nice, Germanic Communitarians). And they’re decent places to live.
So, it’s natural to ask what distinguishes Detroit from those other, much more successful places. Coleman Young is one of those things.
I agree that Detroit’s demographics play a large part in its downfall. I agree with the difference of Detroit vs. other democratic areas, but note that most if not all of those areas have declined as well. I do think Detoit voted for everything, and that a strict system would shape Detroit up. They need a fiscal manager to make ‘politically untenable cuts’ because each elected crony is guarding his fiefdom because of voting.
How do you contend we’ve had Democracy governing since the New Deal simply because we have elections? Democracy influences, it does not govern. The essence of the New Deal is paternalistic Administration by an unelected government for Life – the Academy acts as clerisy, the mass media creates a often false consensus, the Bureaucracy carries it out.
Consensus governs, not democracy.
The New Deal created Administrative Government, paternalistic and with powerful collectivist tools. Also of course permanent war/armed peace. The actual New Dealers governed well, certainly by comparison with their brats that followed in the 60s. Administrative Paternalism requires virtue -narrowly a lack of pervasive corruption- and Patriotism that is you don’t hate your country and the people. We’ve had no consensus for 50 years and elites that are pervasively corrupt and HATE their own people.
We aren’t governed by democracy, we’re governed by elites through an often false consensus leading to disastrous realities.
Much more went into the ruin of Detroit than bad Municipal government. We’ve always had bad municipal governments. We did not have ruin.
You talk of democracy as though it’s a political system separate from the bureaucratic state run by the Cathedral.
Does not compute.
“The People” cannot govern. Democracy cannot exist separately from the methods of control that function under a democracy, i.e. the bureaucracy, the media and professoriate.
The New Deal is not a break from democracy it is the formalization of democracy.
Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised. Odin's Runes were the first form of the work of a Hero; Books written words, are still miraculous Runes, the latest form! In Books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbors and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, many-engined,—they are precious, great: but what do they become? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their Greece; all is gone now to some ruined fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: but the Books of Greece! There Greece, to every thinker, still very literally lives: can be called up again into life. No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men.
—Thomas Carlyle
"To have been always in the right and yet always on the losing side; always being ruined, always under persecution from a wild spirit of republican-demagogism,—and yet never to lose anything, not even position or public esteem, is pleasant enough. A huge, living, daily increasing grievance that does one no palpable harm, is the happiest possession that a man can have. There is a large body of such men in England, and, personally, they are the very salt of the nation. He who said that all Conservatives are stupid did not know them. Stupid Conservatives there may be,—and there certainly are very stupid Radicals. The well-educated, widely-read Conservative, who is well assured that all good things are gradually being brought to an end by the voice of the people, is generally the pleasantest man to be met."
- Anthony Trollope (in The Eustace Diamonds)
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
- H. L. Mencken
The more I see of men, the better I like dogs.
- Madame Roland
vox populi, vox humbug
- W. T. Sherman
Once there was The People - Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth.
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain!
Once There was The People - it shall never be again!
- Rudyard Kipling (quoted from Easy as A.B.C.)
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
- John Adams
[T]he first Whig was the devil
- Samuel Johnson
The people that awakes, first shouts, then gets drunk, pillages, [and] murders, and later goes back to sleep.
- Don Colacho
Foseti 
Is it not the case that most men used to lead their household? They were given a template, but the buck stopped with them, yes?
Is it not the case that today’s women in fact pay their rent, and are evicted if they don’t?
Re Detroit:
“Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy”?
Not Kim Possible?
Oh wait, Kim’s a white ginger…
Detroit is a picture for whatever the observer wants to blame for the failings of American cities, blacks, the American Dream, etc. Cons can blame liberal dominance. Race realists can blame majority black rule. Libs can blame big business for leaving the city. They all seem to avoid blaming the entire system of democratic rule and the bureaucracy that exists in western republics today. Detroit has an illiteracy rate of 3rd world proportions, yet they all can vote. Their chosen leaders end up shakingdown anyone for money while screwing over teh citizens they are suppose to govern. Because each side has something to point at and blame, no one mentions the unmentionable. Democracy sucks. Oh, and Detroit was practically the entire vote margin of Obama’s win in Michigan.
Well, the counterargument is that there are plenty of places which have been functioning ok under Democracy (at least the local implementation thereof) and even Bureaucracy-heavy Liberalism for a long time without coming anywhere near Detroit’s situation. Some of those places are, actually, within spitting distance of Detroit (basically the leftist-tending Scandinavian-heavy portions of the upper Midwest, full of nice, Germanic Communitarians). And they’re decent places to live.
So, it’s natural to ask what distinguishes Detroit from those other, much more successful places. Coleman Young is one of those things.
Indeed, Germany and Scandinavia work well under any form of government, while sub-Saharan Africa do not work under any form of (self) government.
My Detroit fact of the week — in 1940, Detroit was 90% white.
Sub-Saharan African countries, obviously.
I agree that Detroit’s demographics play a large part in its downfall. I agree with the difference of Detroit vs. other democratic areas, but note that most if not all of those areas have declined as well. I do think Detoit voted for everything, and that a strict system would shape Detroit up. They need a fiscal manager to make ‘politically untenable cuts’ because each elected crony is guarding his fiefdom because of voting.
How do you contend we’ve had Democracy governing since the New Deal simply because we have elections? Democracy influences, it does not govern. The essence of the New Deal is paternalistic Administration by an unelected government for Life – the Academy acts as clerisy, the mass media creates a often false consensus, the Bureaucracy carries it out.
Consensus governs, not democracy.
The New Deal created Administrative Government, paternalistic and with powerful collectivist tools. Also of course permanent war/armed peace. The actual New Dealers governed well, certainly by comparison with their brats that followed in the 60s. Administrative Paternalism requires virtue -narrowly a lack of pervasive corruption- and Patriotism that is you don’t hate your country and the people. We’ve had no consensus for 50 years and elites that are pervasively corrupt and HATE their own people.
We aren’t governed by democracy, we’re governed by elites through an often false consensus leading to disastrous realities.
Much more went into the ruin of Detroit than bad Municipal government. We’ve always had bad municipal governments. We did not have ruin.
You talk of democracy as though it’s a political system separate from the bureaucratic state run by the Cathedral.
Does not compute.
“The People” cannot govern. Democracy cannot exist separately from the methods of control that function under a democracy, i.e. the bureaucracy, the media and professoriate.
The New Deal is not a break from democracy it is the formalization of democracy.