John’s father had earned an honest living at GM, and John wanted to follow in his dad’s footsteps. He wanted to stay home, hold a normal job, attend the same Catholic church that set his childhood Sundays, and raise his children in Lincoln Park. But he ran into a dead end after dropping out of high school and when globalization sent most of the auto jobs at Ford and GM abroad, where labor was far cheaper. For his generation, the American Dream—and the vehicles needed to realize it—were being shipped abroad. The days of new sedans elegantly cruising down Southfield Road were replaced by “hillbilly elegies” scored to the tune of “declining home values” that “trap[ped] people” in white towns like Lincoln Park, towns that faded from working-class oases to opportunity deserts.

XREF: Connects to Vance's 'Hillbilly Elegy' themes of working-class decline and the hollowing out of American manufacturing towns.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 186