Apocalypse, New Jersey

  As her young man dies,
On a cold and gray Chicago morning,
Another little baby child is born
In the ghetto 
--In the Ghetto, Elvis Presley
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Matt Taibbi has a good piece at Rolling Stone on societal degradation outside of the Rust Belt in his, "Apocalypse, New Jersey." Go read if you'd like to understand how a good portion of your fellow Americans live.

An excerpt:

Any reporter who's been embedded in Iraq or Afghanistan will find these scenes extremely familiar - high-speed engagements backed by top-end surveillance technology, watched by crowds whose reactions range from bemusement to rage to eye-rolling disappointment. 

In that latter category is Bryan Morton, a fortysomething community leader of sorts who still lives in the North Camden house where he was born. Morton went away in his youth for eight and a half years for armed robbery and drug dealing, got out, went straight, got his college degree, worked for years running local re-entry programs, founded a North Camden Little League, and had things looking up for himself, before he was laid off last May. Fortunately, he'd bought a food cart six years before that, which he left in his backyard as a backup plan; he now drives across town before dawn every day, setting up next to the McDonald's in Camden's pinhead-size "downtown."

.  .  .