03-01-2021, 01:07 PM
(03-01-2021, 10:06 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:(02-28-2021, 11:56 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: That's not the first thing that I notice with Rick Steves, as he generally seeks to show the brighter side of life in the scenic delights and such places as street cafes. Industrial Europe and America never were glamorous even when they were churning out the goods that gave workers a material quality of life that medieval aristocrats would have envied (except for the tiny flats and obligation to toil). Steel cities like Essen, Pittsburgh, Gary, and Birmingham (Alabama) were awful places.
For the most part the cities you mentors are even more awful today, as is Detroit.
At one time, Detroit was the great beacon of promise, when the automobile industry was the equivalent of high technology and Greater Detroit was the equivalent of Silicon Valley in its recent heyday. People came from all over the world to work in factories that paid well. Automobiles created their own need for such high technology as had to fit a motor vehicle (such as the sophisticated radios). Delco was the Apple or Hewlett-Packard of its day.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.