Post-Apocalyptic Dioramas

The most frightening aspect of these photos is that at first glance they appear to be from Detroit or several other American cities which lie in near ruin.

Places where the libraries stand abandoned, mouldering books scattered on the floor, empty dental offices seated in rotting blocks where the flaking ceilings hang in tatters – urban centres let behind by a rapacious tunneling in of hyper-capitalism that has made the poverty and great divide which has always existed between the rich and the poor in America, resemble something that you’d have expected to find in the rural margins of the country during the Great Depression.

You can see some of the photos of Detroit in Ruins by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre here: http://www.marchandmeffre.com/

Places like Motor City have of course been in decline for decades, with the affluent and mostly white inhabitants moving out to newer suburban compounds (many of which themselves are now emptying out as well, leaving stranded islands cut off by job loss and rising petrol prices) but the focus on global free markets and unfettered and deregulated banking over the last ten years has really born bitter fruit in such places.

America has radicalized – weaponized even, the notion that public investiture in a national infrestructure of anything other than its military, equates socialism (which for a poorly educated country means communism). That the private indiviual’s rights to wealth concentrating activities is the paramount feature to enshrine and protect in national law, and that collectivism and society’s wider responsibilities to its most vulnerable and disadtvanged fringes – need not apply. More than this, such urges are seen as down-right Un-American and criminally suspect.

Strident cries from the right-wing fringes for a toothless and disempowered “small” government to ensure all of the above coupled with fears about immigration, gun control, and the expansion of civil rights and abortion are no longer the thing of late night radio hate speech – but have moved into prime time TV (thanks to FOX) and crystalized in the political movement of the Tea Party.

Add to this climate of fear and ignorance a deep dependence on cheap fossil fuels and you have a country that is literally pulling itself to pieces; using its considerable energy and native resources to keep money flowing to the top 1% and expensive wars raging on foreign soil which feed back in a self-sustaining loop.

Is it the end of the world as we know it? Perhaps not, but it certainly has given us a glimpse of what it looks like.

E.

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