Well Knute; I agree with you except for one fact, what we are doing is paving the way for the barbarians. Who knows who they will be? Rome did exactly what you are describing, and then they invited the barbarians in to do their work. That is possibly the answer to you last question. Do our own work; do not expect someone to do it for you. In addition, quit blaming others.

Knute,

Nice work. I loved how the picture of QwestCenturyLink Field really enhanced the message here. Truth is we're in a whole-system transition. The abstraction that Charles Olson says started in ancient Greek times, valuing thought over experience, is finally coming home to roost. The Western model of competition and domination is insufficient. We see this in our approach to "health care" which is more like "disease management" and "denial of death." Why do we spend most of our health care resources in the last six months of someone's life? Denial of death.

And denial of the end of capitalism is going to be much more destructive. Immanuel Wallerstein said:

"We are living in the transition from our existing world-system, the capitalist world-economy, to another world-system or systems. We do not know whether this will be for the better of for the worse. We shall not know until we get there which may not be for another 50 years now. We do know that the period of transition will be a very difficult one for all who live it. It will be difficult for the powerful; it will be difficult for ordinary people. It will be a period of conflicts and aggravated disorders and what many will see as the collapse of moral systems."

The Occupy movement, by and large, understands this, or is a symptom of the death of capitalism. That the local Occupy movement could not agree on a commitment to non-violence is a pity, but there is hope in the air that we can create something better.

This is why I am involved in a deeper look at the culture of our region through the Cascadia Poetry Festival. (http://www.splab.org/cascadia) If the poets can't give us some idea as to deal with what's ahead, we're in serious trouble.

Provocative piece, Mr. Berger; well done.

And you surely win the award for the best most timeless pun ever published in Crosscut: "The lessons from Rome are legion."

Boudicca -- speaking literally --might have said those same words in 61 CE; likewise -- albeit somewhat more metaphorically -- Robert the Bruce in 1303 or Elizabeth I in 1588...

"The real question is not how to fend off invasion or competition, but how do we stop sabotaging ourselves?"

Exactly.

We have education problems because this state, for all its high-flying rhetoric, will not commit to education. (And the cold hard facts as stated by the Education Week article that Knute mentions is proof.)

What would be great is to find a way for many voices to sit down together and commit - as a state, as a city - to a unified voice on what we want in our public education system.

Of course, you only have to read David Brewster's latest attack on some members of the School Board to know that won't happen. The Gates Foundation's Education division does not look for new voices; they exist in their own echo chamber.

And, of course, the various groups/activists all have their own ideas (myself included). But I think the difference is in who listens to who and why.

We can do better and we should raise the level of civic discourse. Knute has started that conversation.

Perhaps some new 'leadership' at the top of state and local government would stave off the fall of local empires. Time for a Republican governor for the first time since 1980-84. Time for a further legal challenge and smackdown of the Washington Supreme Court and its mere allegations....dittos for an exposure of the less than stellar U.S. Attorney and Department of Justice 'scathing meddling agenda' regarding local police forces nationwide and the feds unwillingness to uncover the 1678 illegal votes cast in the 2004 race for governor as found by a state judge in Chelan. Finally, Safeco Field is paid for years ahead of schedule. The people voted for the football stadium. If the big ticket bridges and viaducts can't be fully funded, then retrofit them and fight the battle again in a few years after new leadership has brought about better times.

As I see it, the problem with our schools, the elephant in the room, is that too many of our children come from disadvantaged families and therefore lack the support of all kinds that would allow them to succeed. We keep throwing money at the schools because we certainly aren't going to give it to families who for whatever reasons have substance abuse problems or incarceration records or other mental health or social problems that prevent them from getting jobs that can provide for their families.

Their children, with no home support and often lacking nutrition, or even a roof over their heads, are unable to learn beyond figuring out how to survive. The right wingers tout personal responsibility, but when all a person's prepared for is a minimum wage service sector job, no matter how much they want to take responsibility, there are only so many hours in a day to work 1, 2, or 3 jobs. Meanwhile any children in the home are on their own without anyone to prepare healthy meals or help them with homework or support them in any other ways.

The problem with the personal responsibility model is that when doors to advancement in the working world are closed, the poor have nowhere to turn except to crime or to social services. Social services cuts, so beloved of the personal responsiblity claque, leave the burden back on us to help through church, neighborhood, or personal charity.

I believe many of us are willing to help, but what I see it coming down to is that we pay one way or the other. With a state-administered model we have the advantages of raising some of our neighbors' abilities to take personal responsibility, plus we have a chance at fairness and predictability so that those trying to get on their feet and take responsibility can have some stability as they do so. This costs money and we pay for it.

On the other hand, with the personal responsibility model, folks in need lack any predictability or stability so that they can make and execute a plan to care for themselves and their families. Although we pour money into charities, many are selective about who they help and/or don't offer the kind of organized assistance folks need on a consistent basis because their funding is uncertain and dependent on us, who live uncertain lives and whose jobs and savings can evaporate at any time.

So, we either pay the government on a predictable basis to organize and administer helping programs or we pay the private charities as we can, unpredictably, to take stabs at helping for this or that need but not others, for this or that family situation but not others.

I'd rather see us pay government to hire our neighbors to do this work. After all, government is US, not some distant wrongdoer that can't be trusted. Until we help needy families make some kind of reasonable living and educate them on how to raise their children in a healthy way, no matter how much money we throw at schools, it will never be enough.

To the larger issue here, are we in decline, yes, I think so. We make little in this country because we can pay others to do it less expensively. The excuse is that as consumers we want cheap products. But at the same time, we have exported the jobs that would allow us to consume and share on a level that would promote social stability and growth. We have bought the idea that we must pay some folks obscene salaries because otherwise someone else will and somehow we will lose...well, I'm not sure what.

Meanwhile the accumulated value in our whole country, whether personal or societal, has been since the 80's and still is being looted in front of our eyes while the looters insist we must take responsibility for ourselves. First they told us investing our pensions in the stock market would assure us of a more secure future. After we bought that, they looted our retirements. Many of us have been stripped to our bones by the personal responsiblity folks, and now they're blaming us. The us v. them mentality that they've instilled has taken root and grown like a cancer. I don't know enough of the historical details, but I would venture the guess that social inequality is one of the bellwether signs of decline. Divid and rule is as old as the world. Unfortunately it appears that we have not yet recognized that this is what is going on here in our country. Decline, here we come.

I can't decide whether we're Romulans or Klingons.

Maybe we should all head for the holodeck.

"Education Week recently gave the state an "F" in education spending."

Knute, most would agree you have a serious matter by the tail, so there is no need for half truths such as that sentence of yours copied above. Fortunately the link you provide does a much better job of getting the whole picture straight—all of our state's other grades suggest that what we do spend we spend somewhat effectively, or at least as far as the matters graded go. But as mspat lays out there are many more factors in play. What remains to be said is that most all are fallout from a retrograde "ism" whose name in known only to professional elites yet whose dogma has nevertheless seeped into all of our brains. A recipe for disaster:

"Neoliberalism is a philosophy in which the existence and operation of a market are valued in themselves, separately from any previous relationship with the production of goods and services, and without any attempt to justify them in terms of their effect on the production of goods and services; and where the operation of a market or market-like structure is seen as an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action, and substituting for all previously existing ethical beliefs."
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html

If, as intended, the abstractions leaves you cold, then spend some time with the real-lives, boots-on-the-ground reports in any or all of the well documented "alternative" histories, e.g., Kein, Zinn, Chomsky, or Hofstadter.

Only yesterday the WSJ announced that "America's Newest Company Type: the "Benefit Corporation" is legal in seven states. Check that out too, far from enough, but at least a start on an intentional future.

Lets not model ourselves after the Romans,better the Greeks who valued pedagogery, constructive rhetoric, and the marvel of democracy. In the Roman world bad news attracted attention and dark forecasts achieved importance without being tested by logic and reason. The Romans were more modern than the Greeks but their organized campaign for the conquest of the future world was misshapen by the uniformity and repetition of a military state. The Greeks valued comedy, tradegy and irreverance and we should.go with that.Doomsayers pick low hanging fruit and get attention they don't deserve. Don't go there Skip. Empires decline and fall but we get over it.

This piece is written by old people for old people. My theory is that the attitude of "declinism" we're seeing is a symptom of an aging population.

Yes it looks grim these days, based on Republican primaries and President DINO ("Democrat In Name Only") but when has it looked otherwise? At what time in human history have people been making anything but very human (i.e.very flawed) decisions? It's a rare time, if ever, where people move en masse with wisdom or even long-term self-interest; I can't think of an example, actually.

So sure, worry, but I remember Nixon in 1972 et al and it always looks terrible except for the few times ( e.g. the real estate boom of the mid-oughts) when we kid ourselves that everything is fine.

The issue is whether times are bad? or horrific?

Of course I'm an optimist today.

My thanks to Crosscut's Clickerer for catching two contemporary examples in one of neoliberalism in action, plus a reminder of the plain English definition provided ages ago by Oscar Wilde: "knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing."

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/01/20/Canada-Feels-Like-Peru/

Boooooring. Does anyone think the Seahawks will draft Kellen Moore? Hope springs eternal.

Knute,
I'd like to espouse on this particular comment that you make:

"In the meantime, like the Romans, we're funding massive road projects that we cannot pay for, even while basic day-to-day infrastructure crumbles (potholes, bridges) or remains unbuilt (sidewalks)."

Remember that the roads that Rome built served two purposes. One that they were the mechanism of trade and commerce. But second and more importantly, the roads were the mechanism by which empire was retained and expanded. Rome was fantastically successful at maintain a military superiority and a vast empire because of its system of roads. It permitted governance of far off provinces--including taxation. And it facilitated a highly trained and mobile military that was able to be rapidly deployed and provisioned during campaigns should unrest in a province occur.

So the appropriate analogy to the Romans funding massive road projects would be our own funding of an oversized military that we finance to maintain American empire.

The Roman empire was characterized by a system of taxation that allocated grains from Egypt and North Africa through the ports at Ostia and Portus. And the Roman military was the means by which that taxation of grains was enforced. While many reasons have been listed which explain the fall of Rome, the one that strikes me as the most logical one was that the empire was no longer able to feed Rome itself. It took grain to maintain the hierarchy and the capitalistic society of Rome. When Rome could no longer be fed, when the slave economy could no longer be maintained, then society changed dramatically and eventual collapse occurred.

Similarly our American empire is predicated on the allocation of oil and the US military serves to maintain the grip where worldwide 1 in 4 barrels are used by the United States. So if we see decline in society, it will be due to failure to continue to appropriate the oil back to the US. Viewed through this historical lens, it should be no surprise why the US continues to be involved in wars of empire throughout the Middle East.

Perhaps sometime in the future historians will look at the decline of American empire and posit that we failed because we did not remain true to our democratic principles just as they said the same about the moral decay in Rome. My view though is that such a failure should be consider symptomatic of an economy that runs into its ecological limits.

There was some effort to put things on a more sustainable track back in the 70's. But Jimmy Carter was declared a wimp for doing so, Newt Gingrich is still milking that, and the last round of cheap oil and easy credit allowed an illusory vacation from reality for the last 30 years. That illusion has now run its course. Too bad most of what enabled it was wasted. It might have allowed the construction of foundations of something that might have lasted. The transition back to a more reality based way of life will be painful, but hopefully endurable.

The comments to this piece, "The decline and fall of Seattle", are ample & compelling evidence for Knute's proposition: for the life of me, the comments make little if any sense. They display an abject inability to grasp reality. Such is the disease that has consumed Seattle.

The parallels that you tried to draw didn't really work, and you missed out on the key factor that we can look at when comparing today's society to Rome. Rome's government was run by the wealthy for the benefit of the wealthy, not for the benefit of the people. And when Rome was no longer profitable for the wealthy, the moved to Byzantium and the empire lasted another 1000 years while the west crumbled.

The wealthy are committed to Seattle only so long as Seattle is a place where they can suckle money out of the taxpayer teat. As soon as they can't do that they'll move on to the next burg that is desperate to be seen as a world-class city.

Rome fell because the wealthy did whatever they could to pull as much wealth from the underclasses as possible, and when that money ran out they pulled up stakes and moved. The barbarians didn't overwhelm Rome - they were pulled in by the vacuum of power left behind.

The Mound by the Sound?

Sad watching Seattle decline from the Space Age Promise of the 60s to now... The great green space initiative rejected by the voters. The embracing of the distracting sports stadiums instead. The loss of one of your two dailies...Even Detroit has two... plus they have that innovative website "The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit" to chronicle the city's Great Fall. Instead, Seattle offers us Rock'n Roll museums of Frank Gehry architecture.

And ignoring Seattle and Washington's past when you were on the rise... Neglecting and scrapping those reminders... Letting the lumber schooner Wawona rot in Lake Union was a heart-breaker... The loss of the proud tall-stack ferry San Mateo... Now even the streamline Kalakala, a symbol like the Space Needle, soon to be scrapped...Your past. Your reminders. Of what you could be.

Seattle, the eternal Emerald City, failing like Cleveland. Sad... And following..next... becoming national joke....

The "Mistake by the Lake." What will Seattle's name be?...The "(your suggestion here) by the Sound?"

---SWL
Keene, NH

(How did Seattle's counterpart on the East Coast do it? Inspired if pragmatic leadership in Boston, and education, education, education... Those colleges and universities.)