By now most everyone’s seen – or at least heard of – the Chrysler Superbowl ad starring Clint Eastman – “It’s halftime in America.” ~

If you missed it, the commercial was a two-minute, Chamber of Commerce-type pitch for more government money to make America great, with, um, Detroit leading the way.

 
John Ransom at Townhall dispels the “Come Back” myth, and suggests: We Need a New Quarterback. Good start John, but I’m afraid we need a whole new team!

Unfortunately for all the “Hope & Changers” out there, the commercial was more fiction than fact. Wishful thinking at best; total fabrication at worst.
 

As anyone who lives within 50 miles of Motown can tell you, their ain’t no comeback. Huge sections of the city look like this ➡
 
One of the few still-viable areas in Detroit (theaters and sports stadiums), is only surviving due to investments from the evil 1%: Ford, the-government-didn’t-need-to-bail-us-out-Motor Company (Ford Field) and Mike Illitch, who owns Little Caesar’s Pizza, the Detroit Tigers, the Detroit Red Wings and Motor City Casino. (How many jobs do you suppose has this guy created?!)
 
Coincidentally, on Superbowl Sunday, the Daily (a new “tablet” news newspaper) published this stunner: 911 IS A JOKE – Detroit citizens no longer rely on police as self-defense killings skyrocket. Uh-oh…

Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own. And they’re offering no apologies.
 
“We got to have a little Old West up here in Detroit. That’s what it’s gonna take,” Detroit resident Julia Brown told The Daily.

 
Hey “Dirty Harry!” C’mon back!

How it got this bad in Detroit has become a point of national discussion. Violent crime settled into the city’s bones decades ago, but recently, as the numbers of police officers have plummeted and police response times have remained distressingly high, citizens have taken to dealing with things themselves.
 
In this city of about 700,000 people, the number of cops has steadily fallen, from about 5,000 a decade ago to fewer than 3,000 today. Detroit homicides — the second-highest per capita in the country last year, according to the FBI — rose by 10 percent in 2011 to 344 people.

 
It’s actually a pretty positive story; local government is going broke and breaking down – and the citizens are takin’ back the streets ~

Detroiters are arming themselves with shotguns and handguns and buying guard dogs. Anything to take care of their own. And privately, residents say neighborhood watch groups in Detroit are widely armed.
 
“It’s like the militiamen who stepped up way back when. That’s where the neighborhood folks are,” said James “Jackrabbit” Jackson, a 63-year-old retired Detroit cop who has patrolled the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood for years.
 
“They’re ready to fight,” Jackson said. “We don’t hardly see police anymore.”

 
 
Last December, Reuters featured a photo-essay by Mark Blinch: Detroit’s glimmer of hope ~

(the city) is indeed ground zero for the severely weakened American auto industry. Once I passed the big, shiny Motor City Casino, which seems to be the last marker of downtown, I saw a number of abandoned houses that had been destroyed by fire, libraries forced to shut its doors for good, and countless empty lots among barren streets.

The “glimmer of hope” that Blinch found was St. Leo’s Catholic Church ~
 

St. Leo’s is much more than just a Catholic church. In the basement there is a soup kitchen where volunteers serve up hot meals to the local residents who can’t afford to eat. They also have a medical center, where people can come and get free medical care and receive free medication from a makeshift pharmacy. The doctors and nurses who provide this service donate their time. In addition to the medical service, dentists provide dental care where patients can receive basic services.
 
The church provides hope in a city where help is desperately needed.

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As so many native Michiganders, I find Detroit’s decline awfully depressing. Not just due to the adverse economic effect on the entire state, but because the city has fallen so very far from its potential, and from what it once was.
 
Every few years it seems a new wave of optimism will sweep through the community for a while… only to be flattened out by reality. I’d really like to believe that the city can rise from the ashes. But it’s not gonna happen with phony “come-back” stories, or more failed progressive policies. It’s gonna take a whole lot of real faith – with maybe a little “Dirty Harry” thrown in.