Cleveland and the RNC, 2016

The ocean is a desert with it's life underground
And a perfect disguise above
Under the cities lies a heart made of ground
But the humans will give no love 
--A Horse With No Name, 
America

  You take your world
and I'll take mine 
--On the Road

When they're beset and besieged
The folk not noblessly obliged
However do they manage to shed their weary lot?
Oh, what do simple folk do, that we do not? 
--What Do Simple Folk Do? 
Camelot
_________________________

Why is the Republican party holding its convention in Cleveland, a former staunchly working middle-class, pro-union city (when there were factories in which unions could operate)? Née "Best Location in the Nation", may she R.I.P.

Dare any delegates walk the inner cities to meet-and-greet the locals on their home turf, a dicey proposition by day, a free-fire zone at night? The Cleveland of Ranger's youth is gone (though walking many streets still required carrying a baseball bat even then, if one were smart about it.) But life has proceeded well beyond those halcyon days.

Ranger reckons the contingent won't venture beyond the Green Zone, i.e., a highly-secured convention center. Despite peeps of "gentrification" not everyone's feeling the craft food and beer boom outside of that cordon; not by a long chalk.

There's still no groceries or urban-sized chain stores downtown as there are in other gentrifying areas, the true signs of a living urban area. The cameras will show a few blocks of Tower City, and mostly before dark, and they'll call it all good.

However, if one Googles the search words "safe" + "Cleveland", one won't gain much heart. The best advice is to stay at The Renaissance, from which you can go to Tower City "and you don't even have to go outside." 

The winner for most optimistic online comment was, "Cleveland is much safer than Detroit". Well okay, then.

The water is poor, but surely the conventioneers will be drinking only bottled from their room bar. And on this account Ranger would add his own hopeful slogan, "Cleveland -- at least we're not Flint." So there's that.

Does either party have a plan to renovate and reinvigorate this once-proud, now decaying Rust Belt city? Will the indigenous be a protest presence? Probably not, knowing the history of trigger-happy police, and the enervated condition of too many in the blighted zones who begin drinking their morning Ripple out of bags on their sagging front porches before noon.

If Ranger were to operate as presumptive nominee Trump's George Stephanopoulis, he would suggest the following as must-do's, cameras in tow:

Secure some armored-up Humvees from party diehards and enter those off-limit zones, the neighborhoods of Ranger's young adulthood. Have Mr.Trump flanked by both locals with concealed-carry permits and a police escort, but have the latter be as inconspicuous as possible.

Mr. Trump should breach the forward operating bases (FOBs) of the city, the places where your talking heads will not. He should wear a Kevlar vest, not because he is a white Republican male, but simply because he is a human moving target.

For some down-home feel-good moments, the Trump party should stop at the Slovenian Home on 185th in honor of his wife's heritage.  Moreover, since he missed a lot on his recent trip to the Old Country, he should eat some cabbage rolls at the American-Croation Lodge on Lakeshore Blvd.

After a good meal, the cortege could re-enter The Zone (any zone) and disburse needful things like Pampers, bottled water and Apple Jack as a goodwill gesture. A sort of Clintonian, "I feel your pain" (a la monsieur, not madame.)

A la Reagan to Gorbachev, Ranger says, "Leave that Green Zone, Mr. Trump, and offer something real and constructive." Please highlight the results of 60 years of robust Civil Rights legislation. 

Anything will be a start.

The Wasteland

A recent NYT piece on the Lumenhaus
encouraged us to ennoble this once lovely abode,
"Wrecked House"

Not a good advert for vinyl siding

Pigeon Home

"Madonna's House"

The Bottoms Up gentleman's club.
Note the Sonitrol of the 'hood: barred doors

We wonder if the Original Glorious Church in Christ
was the convention center He visited

And you thought fish fry's weren't halal?

"Tha Brothahood Barber Shop" --
in case Obama needed a little off the top

..A mile away, nice houses in a small
oasis. "Escape From New York", anyone?

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn.
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
--The Wasteland, T.S. Eliot
__________________

Ranger and Obama recently shared a holiday treat since we both had the pleasure of visiting Cleveland, Ohio, Ranger's hometown. This former "Best Location in the Nation" is suffering like many other Rust Belt cities, and isn't the best for much, unless you're out to score some drugs or wish to be robbed.

Pleasure indeed! Browse our montage of Ranger's former hunting grounds, deep in the now-wilds of C-Town. None of these photos are exceptional and represent the shit-hole that is the reality of too many United States inner cities. They were all taken within blocks the two homes in which Ranger grew up.

Note the house with the pigeons rooting in the exposed eaves. People were seen drinking out of paper bags at noon on porches with plywood-covered windows. We doubt Mr. Obama's motorcade passed in front of those ghetto homes. Those people are passed by on the roadway of life.

Please realize that Pigeon House or Wrecked House are not anomalies; the detritus follows each street, for endless blocks of downtown. The outliers are the very occasional well-maintained homes, usually inhabited by some equally very old-timer.

One's attentiveness to home maintenance is not rewarded in these now-slums, however -- one house had a For Sale sign of $19,000, and it is highly unlikely they will get their price before the rats devour whatever's left of the wiring.

You read horrified about people in Iraq living with only intermittent electricity? It is not unknown in your own country -- the U.S. -- for people to live without heat and cooling, and even water, either intermittently or as a lifestyle. We are not talking only squatters, nor are we talking the new Green-elite or the Amish, who engineer a livable existence sans many amenities (but not without water.) Note that most of these houses have satellite dishes and open windows, suggesting occupants. (For those who can afford something, one may be able to live with intermittent utilities, but mustn't go without satellite.)

Our politicians seem to wear blinders to a reality that is a stark as anything in Baghdad. They ignore the plight of a blighted America, functioning under the false belief that the U.S. has the wherewithal to continue its pretensions to world interventions and occupations.

Our leaders are living like it's still 1950, when the Best Location had almost a million citizens and was a thriving hub of manufacturing activity. Today's ghettoized Cleveland has lost almost all of its manufacturing and half of it's citizens. The factories are razed or shuttered, moldering in decay where they stand in mute testimony to a once-great nation.

The citizens too occupy a 1932 economic time warp, sadly, even they forgoing their own better interests, reacting mainly to meaningless, hot-button drivel topics like who's going to hell for being gay or Muslim. (Our average citizens are probably not much different from average citizens everywhere, but it is leadership and infrastructure that makes the difference.)

We get what we deserve, save for the innocents, like children.