Nice writing.
there is a great deal of unease and uncertainty about the future.
I'll infer from your writing that you would agree that the fall of communism created a vacuum in the international world of oppositional forces and their resultant motivational energy. Without someone or something to be against, what is left to work for? We have in a sense created terrorism ourselves as an oppositional force so that we can have something against which to work and thus something which allows us to define ourselves as against. We are not them, therefore we are all the things that are not them.
Communism functioned like that for years. After communism failed (or rather, after they changed its name to Russian democracy) the Western world had to come up with something else. Globalism is one, but globalism is too amorphous and complicated to be "against". There are no perceptible armies, just invisible hedge funds, investment strategies, CEO's in glass skyscrapers and other ephemeral things. Besides, most Americans at least fantasize about being part of that whole system and sleeping on the piles of money that result.
But terrorism fits in nicely. We can make it anything we want it to be, so that it is perfect for matching the magnitude of our anxiety about the future. The more worried one is about what is going to happen to the world, the more violent and comprehensive the international terrorist conspiracy will be in our fertile imaginations.
The reality is just as you say it - the real "terrorism" is the corporate reaction to the dwindling production/consumption cycle at the end of the post-industrial revolution that was "all based on decisions to maximize profits" at the expense of economic viability in the areas where the industrial revolution began. The result is that during the transitional period from an economy that makes things to an economy that manages things, the government will have to step in periodically to make sure that corporate economic development happens to the benefit of its nation's citizens, rather than at their expense.
Detroit is definitely a solid example of the latter. We are done being an industrial country. We made billions making things, then we made billions buying things, then we made billions investing in all the debt that resulted from buying things, and now we are tapped out. And corporate America is no-one's friend when all the money is gone.
Wait, what were we talking about? Oh right, photos. It occurs to me that it is precisely the corporate aspect of these photos of Detroit that might be at least a philosophical problem with their aesthetics. They are technically well-done, colors are beautiful, textures and surfaces are perhaps even opulent in their decay, but as such, they may merely recapitulate the philosophical treatment of scenes that has more in common with the glossy photos of a corporate annual report.
It also occurs to me that a model of the sort of involvement in subject that KirkT seeks in these photos my best be represented by the work of Lewis Hine, who did all
the photos of child labor during the early part of the twentieth century. Interestingly, he gained access to these factories by subterfuge, telling plant managers that he was photographing the positive aspects of industrialization, not the deplorable conditions of the children's work environments. The managers typically agreed to let him photograph at will, even trotting out all the kids for a group photo. But the camera did.
