Alec MacGillis, "Left Behind America," Frontline, PBS, 2018

First broadcast on September 11, 2018, the "Left Behind America" episode of Frontline (PBS, 1983–) depicts Rust Belt cities of the Midwest as blighted hellscapes in which the abandoned urban residents of the lower middle class struggle against insurmountable challenges in the twenty-first century, including plant closings, massive layoffs of manufacturing workers, double-digit unemployment, and a spectacularly severe drug addiction crisis.¹ Journalist Alec MacGillis, who has worked for the New Republic, Washington Post, and Baltimore Sun, reports the story for ProPublica, a nonprofit organization producing investigative journalism. In the episode, MacGillis argues that Dayton, Ohio—the primary subject of the documentary—is representative of many "small and midsize cities that used to matter a whole lot to what our country made, invented, and aspired to."

"Dayton was once the epitome of industry and ingenuity in the American heartland," MacGillis observes, calling the city the Silicon Valley of its day. Along with mentioning the General Motors, Delco, and National Cash Register (NCR) manufacturing plants that were once located in Dayton, MacGillis cites the city's peak population of more than a quarter of a million people in 1960. High-paying union jobs attracted African Americans from the South to the city as part of the Great Migration, but the resulting white racism manifested as white flight, hollowing out the city and destroying its tax base. Despite being home to 40 percent of the city's population, West Dayton—historically the only neighborhood open to African Americans because of decades of redlining—eventually deteriorated, losing its businesses, its hospital, and even its only grocery store.

According to MacGillis, Reagan-era deregulation, President Clinton's North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the admission of China into the World Trade Organization sped jobs out of the country, which left Dayton struggling to redefine its economy. Between 2001 and 2007, the city lost one out of three manufacturing jobs, and, at nearly 35 percent, Dayton's poverty rate was almost triple the national average. In 2008, the city that once had more auto-manufacturing jobs than anywhere except Detroit lost its last remaining General Motors plant. In 2009, NCR moved its headquarters from Dayton to the suburbs of Atlanta. By 2010, Dayton's unemployment rate topped 12 percent, and its population dropped to just over half its peak from fifty years earlier. Frontline reports that, while Dayton has become immigrant-friendly in an attempt to grow its population, companies like Chinese auto-glass manufacturer Fuyao, which moved into the former GM plant, pay employees less than half of what they made working for the car manufacturer. Although the unemployment rate in Montgomery County has dropped, former mayor Paul Leonard acknowledges that the quality of the jobs is not as good. Many people earn minimum wages with no benefits and must turn to food pantries and soup kitchens to survive.

Partly because of its "Crossroads of America" location at the intersection of Interstates 70 and 75, Dayton became "ground zero" of a national opioid epidemic. In the documentary, Dayton mayor Nan Whaley notes that many people developed their addiction after taking purportedly nonaddictive prescription drugs for body aches caused by the repetitive motion of assembly-line work. After losing their jobs and health insurance, they then turned in desperation to even more dangerous street drugs like fentanyl and heroin. Dayton's soaring death toll compelled the Montgomery County coroner to store bodies in refrigerated trailers because the morgue's coolers were full. The financial cost of the epidemic was staggering, with taxpayers paying for strained police and fire department services, needle exchanges, and a clogged judicial system.

There are some modestly hopeful notes in the "Left Behind America" documentary. Many Ahiska Turks came to Dayton for its low cost of living, and some of them started their own businesses, including American Power, a transportation company mentioned in the documentary. In West Dayton's food desert, more than sixteen hundred people signed up to join Gem City Market, a proposed food co-op. But MacGillis, who narrates this autopsy in the somber tones of a funeral director, leaves little room...