Still Waiting For The Renaissance

摘要

If you grew up in southeast michi-gan in the past four decades, as I did, you were raised among reminders that things used to be better, once, before you came along. The empty factories. The abandoned blocks in Detroit. The grade-school U.S. maps with the retro pictures, on Michigan's mitten, of Model T's and '57 Chevys. The headlines from the 1970s read like the headlines of 2008: The mayor of Detroit was in trouble. The Lions were losing. And the auto industry was disappearing. When a state lives with a story line of decline for so long, it doesn't just affect the mood. It becomes part of the culture. Whereas America's history has been one of expanding horizons, yours has become funnel-shaped. Much like the postbellum South, Rust Belt culture looks backward at an idealized past-a nostalgia not for plantations but for three-bedroom houses paid up on blue collar salaries.