Hindsight traces its arch among the eerily still buildings of Governors Island, within sight of New York City. The presence of the military on this island goes back to Dutch colonial times. It culminated in their settlement in Brick Village; a residential project like so many a Levittown mass-produced along the lines of military housing after World War II to fulfil the promise of liberty and happiness through private property, for the sake of which America fought. This model suburb is now a desert island; its empty houses call to mind those of so many Americans whose dreams of access to property have recently been exploited and shattered by irresponsible financial speculators. They are haunted by the voice of a present-day soldier for whom enlisting seemed like a last chance to escape the planned obsolescence of all but the wealthiest social classes of the United States, by enlisting to fight for them as the promised land of opportunity. This vision of a home of the brave, whose manifest destiny to secure a continent and then make the world safe for free enterprise would ultimately benefit all, ends up dissolving like any mirage, under the peeling paint of leprous walls, along with the statue of Liberty as reflected in the blind windows of a shuttered house.