But in big cities, rising poverty and declining tax bases have contributed to a profound deterioration.

This raises the question of whether community policing can work in areas of profound deterioration.

But then there was an interstellar war, and for long years the shattered colonies were separated from their mother-planet not only by the gulfs of space but also by a profound deterioration of culture.

Is that the same political work that is so highly effective that the only major change since the 1970s, when I regularly reported from the region, is of a profound deterioration in all aspects of life for ordinary Palestinians?