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| Detroit... now less like Robocop |
Over the years I'd heard and read some pretty scary things about what Detroit was like and imagined it to be a cross between Sarajevo (circa 1993) and Robocop. I half expected to be mugged the moment I stepped off the plane.
I'm happy to report that it's clean, surprisingly quiet and in pretty good shape (at least the places I saw) for a city that's been ravaged by a badly run economy. There were surprisingly fewer burned out abandoned buildings and a lot less graffiti than I expected.
The airport which is actually located near a little place called Romulus, was only disappointing in that there were no actual Romulans marching about. The airport is clean, beautifully and efficiently designed, and the customs and security people are helpful and very friendly.
I was quickly on the interstate, no maze of confusing on-ramps and a short while later in downtown Detroit.
Detroit is already in my opinion, better than Toronto. It seems cleaner, greener, better designed and the people are significantly friendlier. In my opinion, Toronto by comparison is a confusing, ugly concrete hell-hole with a dreadful transit system run by a despotic Jabba-the-Hutt.
I also have to say that Americans are in general, a lot friendlier than I'd been led to believe. The Canadian media would have you believe that there are three types of people in the US: those that have guns, those that are too poor to have guns and those that have enough money to hire people with guns to protect them. And they're all rude and prefer concrete jungles to open green spaces and liberally throw there trash everywhere.
Quite the opposite I found.
The American's I encountered are a friendly, hard working, bunch and very curious. They want to know all about you, where you're from, are you enjoying yourself, and do you have any ketchup potato chips?
Apparently they don't have ketchup flavored potato chips.
They also hate their politicians more than we do and they're not shy about saying so. I think they're about ready to lynch the lot of them. The words, "greedy", "self serving" and "unscrupulous" were used often along with a lot of other colourful language I won't repeat here.
History has shown the more you beat the larger portion of your population into poverty and obscurity, the more likely you're going to spawn some sort of revolution. And in America, they've made rocket launchers a and automatic weapons a common household item.
The October revolution succeeded with significantly less resources. Those in the US government defending the second amendment may one day fine themselves on the wrong end of the trigger.
My solution: Change your laws to allow foreigners to run for office. Vote me in. I'll sort it all out. My party runs on a platform of freedom, literacy and education, the abolishment of poverty and most importantly, ketchup chips for all!
you just have to became a naturalized American citizen to run for all but the President, but oh, isn't that the one you want ? ;)
ReplyDeletethough you'll lose on that chip issue