Here in Michigan, it’s hard not to sense that something fundamental shifted, or perhaps snapped, during the recession—not necessarily at its nadir, but during the years that followed, when the news touted the “recovery” of the market while people throughout the state continued to lose their homes and their jobs. Any lingering belief that Detroit stood as a symbol of the nation—that its prosperity and the rest of the country’s were intertwined—was shattered in 2013 when the city declared bankruptcy the same week the Dow Jones and the S&P closed at record highs. The city had been through hard times before; but if the crisis had a particularly demoralizing effect this time around it was because it undermined, in a way that even the Great Depression had not, the populist myths that have long animated the region. There is an uneasiness here, a needling suspicion that the fruits of the economy do not correspond to the exertions of the nation’s labor force; that prosperity, once envisioned by Diego Rivera as an endless collaborative assembly line stretching into the future, is now a closed loop that ordinary people are locked out of. From such desperation, the natural tendency to reflect can evolve into a misguided effort to restore.