You Probably Need To Pacify The Area First

On Twitter, I read through a particularly nasty exchange where some Tea Party type was told, in essence and with a lot of profanity, that they were a heartless scumbag because they wanted to cut government spending. My first response, which I did not post, was to ask, "Is Detroit compassionate?" That's an old theme here at the 'Post - it's not compassion when you go bankrupt, it's actually quite the opposite.

That led me to scope out the Detroit Free Press on line to see how the Motor City was doing these days which led me to this article on street light repair. Detroit's got a lot of infrastructure rot and self-inflicted damage that city crews are valiantly trying to fix. Not everyone is joining in the effort, however.

Although several residents said streetlights are needed in the east-side area, one man suggested keeping them in place could prove challenging.

“You know, it’s a start. ... But then again ... if you get some young guys that are selling drugs out here who don’t want streetlights, they’ll shoot them out,” said David Adkins, 47, who lives on Tacoma, which is part of the east-side project area.

Confronted by this situation, my thought would be to pull all repair crews and occupy and control the area first. If you're so short of money that you can't do all basic repairs or pay full pensions for retirees, it makes no sense at all to fix things only to have them wrecked by the residents. That's like setting fire to what little money you have.

So that's where things stand. They've run out of money to do all the necessary repairs and are faced with trying to extend services into what is effectively hostile territory. That's quite a harvest for the compassionate and open-minded who spent the place into bankruptcy and discarded traditional, nuclear-family-based morality.

Given their budget situation, a Starter Army is probably all they can afford. Still, they could do worse. When it came to pacifying barbarian lands, these guys were pros.