Detached From Reality

Reuters has an article about arson in Detroit. In the article is this surreal comment.

A documentary about Detroit's fire epidemic, "Burn," received critical acclaim last year for exploring the crisis through the eyes of firefighters.

"Arson is a form of self-expression in a place where you can't express yourself," Brenna Sanchez, co-producer/director of "Burn," told Reuters.

Emphasis mine.

Self-expression? As in artistic self-expression? Must be, given the context. How completely separated from self-reliance do you have to be to consider arson self-expression. Can you imagine the sharecroppers in the 1890s South burning down each others' houses and chalking it up to self-expression? Um, no. They'd get together and beat the tar out of the arsonist because they'd have had no means of replacement short of rebuilding the houses themselves. Houses in modern-day Detroit are artistic canvases to the arsonists because they have no real value. Someone else will pay to replace them, someone else will put out the fire, someone else will pay for the services, someone else will pay for everything.

Can't express yourself? Who is stopping them from saying or doing anything? The police aren't exactly manning every street corner. That phrase is beyond belief. It seems to me that self-expression is at it's peak in a place where civilization has broken down. That's all they're doing all day long - self-expression. It's madness to think that the workaday drudges paying what bills get paid in Detroit have more self-expression available to them than the arsonists.

The more we accept sociopathic behavior as normal, the more surreal the excuses for it become.

Right after this photo was taken, they burned down the house next door in an act of self-expression.