Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

I couldn't find a way to describe it until now. In the past week, as the Big 3 subsidy has risen as the first post-election news of import, I've had a familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I couldn't place my finger on why it was familiar.

It's the feeling of Michiganomics.

Not the school, peace be upon it, the state. The panic over possible closings, insistent hands thrust in the face of government cheese dispensers, discussion of union reform, all of these kinds of events have been par for the course for The Wolverine State over the past 30 years. When you are a political/economics nerd in the state, you grow used to the culture. I did.

But I've moved out, moved back to Colorado. I'll have been gone from Michigan for 1 year this December, and already I've forgotten the feelings: the malaise (to quote a terrible president), the shallow seeds of hope that are perpetually being uprooted by a world racing over and past its ancestor. If I were to describe the feeling in a 1,000 words:

(H/T: At Detroit)

This week has been revelatory. I see Nardelli, Waggoner, Mullaly, Gettelfinger, and Stabenow in front of Congress, first pleading for assistance, then demanding help in a voice that betrayed the fear behind the words. I've seen this before, I tell myself. On Facebook I see the status update: "If President Bush bailed out New Orleans, why doesn't he bail out Detroit? He's turning his back on Michigan." This kind of statement, patently naive as it is, still echoes the man's real emotions, his confusion and disillusionment with the treadmill of pain he knows as "life in Michigan."

I see all this stuff, and it reminds me of Michigan. It reminds me of the pains and pleasures I observed every day over 3 years. But I'm the rarity out here in the West. I guarantee that most people in my neighborhood have no emotional connection with the Rust Belt area, and as far as they are concerned, American automakers were dead years ago. Besides, they'll ask, Toyota's are made in Kentucky, aren't they? Screw Detroit. They'd be right, of course. You couldn't walk them down the streets of the Midwest and point out the dilapidated 1950's grandeur in every building. You couldn't describe to them the smell of a holiday dinner put on the table by a man who's entire essence was tied to two letters on a blue rectangle. I'm not sure that it would make a difference any way.

Out here in the West, life is an entirely different species of beast. It's as if we've evolved from the cities and lives of the Midwest into a world that's more...alive, I guess. I don't think my 15 year old brother is even familiar with the idea of a union, or with high unemployment. Hell, I don't think my 22 year old brother has any actual experience with that blight. It's one thing to see Wolf Blitzer show a picture of a desolate street or corrupt city, it's another to see friends, with tears in their eyes, move away from the land of their childhood in the search of a better job and better life.

Now the rest of the country's learning about that world, and I'm not sure that's good. This is one kind of problem that 'awareness' rarely helps. Michigan needs to break free, start afresh, rather than try to rescue itself.

What I saw during the hearings this week was 4 men and a woman who are trying to convince their countrymates that their industry (and region) were worthy of saving. Perhaps this time they convinced enough bureaucrats to get the money to stave off death for another year, but I know they haven't convinced their fellow citizens. Don't fight the end, Detroit. We can start again.

No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

-Samuel Beckett