On August 6, 2020, I wrote a blog that changed my life.
That blog: Seattle, A City in Fear Can Be Restored, described a city in decline.
- A city where violent mobs were looting stores, breaking windows, and taking over sections of the city.
- A city in which homelessness was expanding rapidly, much of it driven by mental illness, drugs, and a lack of enforcement of basic laws.
- A city in which political violence was okay and political leadership (such as the City Council) not only tolerated lawlessness but encouraged it.
- A city in which many, including municipal leaders, were calling for the defunding of the police and vilified those responsible for civil safety.
I paid a serious price for that blog.
- Within hours I got a call from Joey Cohn, manager of Public Radio Station KNKX, terminating my weather segment on Fridays. A public radio station that does not believe in freedom of speech.
- Some students of the University of Washington associated with the auto workers union circulated a petition demanding that I be fired from my faculty position.
- The chair of my department (now replaced) called my blog "disgusting" to some local media.
The key message of my blog was that political violence is wrong. That undermining public safety hurts the least fortunate of the city and inevitably undermines the city's viability. More importantly, I cared deeply about Seattle and feared what was happening.
What really got some folks angry at me (like Joey Cohn) was my comparison of what happened in Seattle to what occurred in Germany before WW2. But the more I read about that time, the more I think it is true. The brownshirts used violence as a political tool. Same as in Seattle. The political leadership was happy to let street brawlers use violence, without being directly involved. The same as Seattle. The violence was particularly directed at Jewish businesses (same in Seattle....Uncle Ikes and Samuel's Jewelers for example, with anti-Israel graffiti in CHOP, the area taken over by Antifa). Recently, it became clear that several BLM chapters support the horrific, barbaric violence in Israel, as well as the end of the State of Israel. There is a reason that Jewish agencies, such as the AJC, supported me. Fascism is generally a creature of the left, not the right.
Unfortunately, much of what I worried about has come to pass.
Downtown Seattle has lost many of its businesses, many driven away by crime, shoplifting, and loss of clientele. Covid was not the main driver of the decline, something shown by the viability of other cities (such as Miami).
Homelessness has risen rapidly in much of the city, with hundreds dying on the streets each year. 2022 brought a record-breaking 310 deaths in King County (mainly Seattle), many associated with drug overdoses. A large proportion of the homeless are mentally ill.
A lot of the problem originated in a problematic city council that believed in defunding police, tolerating crime, and not taking the homeless situation (and associated drug use and mental illness) seriously. The election is coming up in a few days and Seattle residents can revamp the council by voting for candidates motivated to turn the situation around. Here are my recommendations, which amazingly are the same as the Seattle Times:
I started reading this blog about that time in 2020. The predictions made sense to me at the time....and looking back were mostly accurate.
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking so many risks. It's been a difficult time for those of us who have stood strong in the face of tyranny. I expect better times to follow. Spring follows winter.
ReplyDeleteI am one of those former KNKX listeners. When the uproar over your blog started, I re-read the blog several times, thinking I must have missed something. I had not... your views reflected my own, as I was saddened to see my former home, my beloved Seattle, in chaos. When I posted my disagreement to Cohn's decision on a KNKX Facebook group page, I was attacked by the moderator for being ignorant of all the facts...I discontinued my sustaining membership, a bitter decision on my part, as I was one of the many who had contributed significantly to buy the station's independence... and I wasn't even a Washington resident. The entire experience was distasteful to say the least.
ReplyDeleteWell, I am a Seattle resident, other than that, though, my story is the same as yours. I gave to help save then KPLU and was a sustaining member of KNKX until Cliff was fired. That was it for me. Listening to various viewpoints and thinking about them is crucial - denial for its own sake brings tyranny.
DeleteThe mainstream media is used intentionally for disinformation purposes. In Seattle today, the actual facts are dismissed as lies. So-called “fact checking” organizations are created for the purpose of burying the facts.
DeleteI was talking to a climate-doomsday friend a few weeks ago. I cited you as an authority on the weather and climate here. His response was that you were somehow shady. He didn't say how. This was not the first time he'd expressed that opinion. I wouldn't be surprised that KNKX is slandering you. A defamation lawsuit might be a good idea against them.
ReplyDeleteNo, lawsuits are not the answer - lawsuits will never solve the underlying problem.
DeleteThis is the same thing in my view, as what has happened in Portland almost to a T. How a comfortable and scenic community has declined to a pitiful remnant. Only new people in leadership can change it, none of the existing.
ReplyDeleteActually, like any living entity that is in poor health, it's up to you and me to change it, not some "savoir" politician. The hard work has to be done by each individual, and today's individual's have forsaken their culture, heritage, and history, don't care about the community at large any more.
DeleteVery true. Read the next to last chapter in Tolkien's Return of the King for details on the fix: "The Scouring of the Shire."
DeleteThank you for the very courageous comments. It is important that observers like you give your opinions, and not stay silent. A shame to see the self-manufactured decline of a major city. The evidence is irrefutable that the existing policies are not working, yet there is an organized effort to stop people from speaking out for needed changes.
ReplyDeleteThanks you for speaking out. It is clear that existing policies don't work and things are getting worse, but there is an organized effort to keep people silent
ReplyDeleteInteresting, I didn't see BLM listed as one of the neo-fascists groups here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism_in_North_America (ok, not really interesting). I would also say a single twitter account holder is not a representative sample of BLM.
ReplyDeleteMultiple BLM groups were involved in this. BLM has been anti-Israel for a long time.
DeleteTwo days ago I saw 7 or 8 different vehicles on I-5, Seattle to Portland, weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds, doing 80 in the slow lane to move up, recklessly moving over, etc. Refueling in Centralia I witnessed a hit and run on Harrison Ave. It's happening. WE're losing control of the streets and also freeways.
ReplyDeleteI don't approve of passing in the right lane, just as I don't approve of camping in the left lane. Understand, though, that oblivious drivers sitting left blocking traffic are the true instigators here.
DeleteI-5 from Eugene to Peace Arch suffers from the worst lane discipline of the entire lower 48. If the effect bothers you, then identify the correct cause.
I echo Gary's comments here. After moving from Chicago to Portland over ten years ago, I watched the city begin a long, slow decline, perfectly encapsulated by the nightly downtown riots that went on every day for almost an entire year. No police even attempted to stop them, because over half of the force had resigned via the defund movement. Antifa and BLM's footsoldiers made sure the destruction was complete, the city core is now dead and dangerous as hell, even in broad daylight. The brilliant economist Thomas Sowell said a long time ago the "decline is a choice," and the local residents voted for it, good and hard.
ReplyDeleteCliff, although I do not buy all of your conclusions* about climate change, I really appreciate your clarity, concern, and insight on the public-safety situation you see every day in Seattle. Like the Seattle Times / Cliff Mass axis, we do not live in a Good-vs-Evil world with total allies and total opponents. I appreciate your taking the time and effort to share your on-the-ground observations about Seattle such as those in today's post.
ReplyDelete*Regarding your conclusions about climate change, I have no quibble with your meteorology or climate science. How could I?- you are trained in that field, while I am only peripheral.
Rather, my quibble is with your occasional statements to the effect that the Pacific Northwest will fare just fine as the atmosphere and ocean warm. (Or at least that is how I read them. If you are being misunderstood by reader such as myself, please elaborate..) Such rosy statements as I have detected are not about the physics but about the societal consequences. You would be correct if the Pacific NW were an "adiabatically isolated" societal parcel, without flows to/from the surroundings. But the Pacific NW is not isolated. I think there is likely to be massive, truly epic in-migration from regions of the U. S. and more so outside the U. S., of folks seeking a better life or in certain cases survival.
Trouble is, I'm afraid, our society is not very robust against that strain. The rise of Trumpism is in no small part due to public fear of in-migration. And look at the rise of right-wing, even proto-Fascist political movements in Europe in the wake of a million migrants from the Syria civil war hellscape.
It's in everyone's interest to keep the wet-bulb temperature in the safe zone everywhere people live. Although the Pacific NW will not be in the wet-bulb danger zone under any realistic scenario, other places will be, and the consequent migrations will pose a challenge to societies that are actually quite fragile, including the U. S. and even the Pacific NW.
Abe Jacobson, we have good scientific evidence that solar geo-engineering through solar radiation modification (SRM) could quickly reduce the earth's global mean temperature by 2 C in the space of less than a decade, possibly in as short a time frame as five years if SRM were to be aggressively pursued.
DeleteThe concept is to inject 80 million tons of sulfur dioxide directly into the stratosphere annually, doing so indefinitely into the future, for a cost of roughly 200 billion dollars a year. SRM would return the earth's climate system to that of the Little Ice Age which occurred between about 1400 and about 1750.
The problem with SRM is that it might have some heavy-duty unintended side effects such as acid rain pollution, crop failures, and possibly even wide-spread famines.
However, regardless of these risks, the fact is that we have every reason to believe that solar geo-engineering through SRM is technically feasible, that it is easily affordable, and that it would be highly effective in quickly reducing the earth's global mean temperature.
Net Zero is a complete fantasy. China, India, and the Third World will never abandon fossil fuels. But solar geo-engineering employing SRM isn't a fantasy, even if it carries significant environmental and societal risks.
That's why the Chinese are giving consideration to pursuing SRM unilaterally from their own territory. The SO2 injected into the stratosphere from Chinese territory would quickly disperse over the entire globe, quickly producing another Little Ice Age.
Those who believe that the steady increase in the earth's global mean temperature which is now occurring is a serious risk for humanity will accept the risks of SRM and will push hard for its adoption.
Absolutely agree, thanks for saying the truth. Unfortunately I think things will get much worse here before they get better. The political pipeline is filled with leftist extremists, and we no longer have any balanced local news. Our only regional paper The Seattle Times, is filled with ex Stranger writers and is basically The Stranger light. Our next governor is pushing bills like HB1333 see: https://kpq.com/bill-in-wa-house-seeks-to-criminalize-terroristic-words-speech/.
ReplyDeleteI think there is a real chance that blogs like yours will be banned in the future.its sad and scary.
It's all but certain the bill will pass. And it's 100% certain Bob Ferguson will be our next governor. And it's fairly predictable that 'climate change denialism' will eventually be labeled by the bill's chartered state commission as being one form of hate speech covered within the scope of the law's application and intent. As will other forms of free speech now deemed to be constitutional under the 1st Amendment.
DeleteThe state might not arrest Cliff Mass for stating his realistic and honestly-held opinions concerning the actual dangers of climate change, but those opinions could certainly be used as justification for terminating his employment as a tenured professor at UW.
From 100 miles and 2 hours away by auto -- good luck.
ReplyDeleteWe’ll, you and the Seattle Times may not agree on climate, but, you’re 100% in sync with recommendations for City Council.
ReplyDeleteI watched burn, loot and murder traumatize Seattle, last time I visited was in 2019, I like my eastern Washington town where the police are not political and have the support of the residents, Seattle obviously does not need my money, not headed there anytime soon or ever.
ReplyDeleteThat's a weird thing to say because (in general) for every $100 paid in taxes in eastern Washington, the state returns $133.
DeleteCliff, you were correct then, and you are correct now. What's disappointing is that the voters have mostly not learned. While we avoided electing the worst examples such as NTK and Nikkita Oliver, we still have people like Bob Ferguson in office who to my knowledge has never made a single public statement about leftist street violence in the state's largest city. I guess he's been too busy indicting police officers on trumped up charges.
ReplyDeleteSeattle has declined so much in the 25 years I've lived here that I got my concealed carry permit and started carrying everywhere I go. I make a special focus to carry on public transit, or when going to any place that puts up signs saying no firearms allowed, because of how those places draw assailants. This list includes Benaroya Hall and even UW campus. It's better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
I would encourage your readers to inform themselves on Washington's judicial races. Much of the reason for the breakdown in public safety is a criminal apologist pipeline which runs from public defender to municipal judge, and from there to more senior judges all the way to the WA Supreme Court. We have a single party in power in this state, and all of them are in league to give criminals 30, 40 chances until they kill someone, and then maybe more chances after that. The judges need to go -- even more than the politicians sometimes.
We’ll said, totally agree!
ReplyDeleteSeattle been dead since big tech and big pharma decades ago haha nice weather blog....
ReplyDeleteCliff - thank you for speaking truth to power.
ReplyDelete"fascism is...a creature of the left" 😂😂😂Your weather stuff is good but christ you don't know your history one bit. As the kids say, stay in your lane. There's a good reason you got tossed into the weeds
ReplyDeleteI am afraid you are uninformed. Nazi stands for National Socialism and much of the Nazi's program was entirely socialistic. The prototypical fascist, Mussolini, was a socialist and was a socialist leader. Hitler was a great fan of U.S. socialistic progressives and large govermental programs. The evidence is powerful that fascism is just another movement on the left. They hated the communists not because there were different but because they were so similar. Communism and fascism were competitors for the hearts and minds of the left.
DeleteI vehemently disagree with this take, Cliff. Fascism presented itself as a third way that wasn't beholden to either the right or left. But this was a largely disingenuous appeal, given the emphasis on social hierarchy, class collaboration, "traditional" values, etc., all of which are more common of right wing political movements. If fascism was roughly comparable to socialism, Mussolini wouldn't have needed to start a new political movement as his ideology shifted toward the right.
DeleteCiting the fact that Nazi is an acronym that includes socialism is not compelling either unless we take all political names at face value (I guess North Korea is really democratic? It says so right in the name!).
You claim that Hitler was a fan of US progressives. Can you provide good historical documentation to show this? It's my understanding that the main influence of the US on Nazi ideology was our institutionalized racism and segregation, e.g., https://time.com/4703586/nazis-america-race-law/ and https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler
But all of this is unnecessary when we can read the words of Hitler himself. These passages from his 1923 interview in American Monthly dispell the myth Nazism was leftist. (interview available here: https://famous-trials.com/hitler/2529-1923-interview-with-adolf-hitler)
"No healthy man is a Marxist, for being healthy, he recognizes the value of personality."
""Bolshevism," the chief of the Brown Shirts, the Fascists of Germany, continued, gazing at me balefully, "is our greatest menace. Kill Bolshevism in Germany and you restore 70 million people to power. France owes her strength not to her armies but to the forces of Bolshevism and dissension in our midst."
""Socialism," he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, pugnaciously, "is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists."
Finally, one need only look at modern adherents to Nazism. They're not leftists. We all know that. Neo-Nazi movements are not filled with socialists; they're instead comprised of far right racists.
It's funny, but the question about whether the nazis were socialist has apparently come up enough that there's even an entry in the encyclopedia britannica. The short answer is no, they were and are not socialists. https://www.britannica.com/story/were-the-nazis-socialists
DeleteMajorie Taylor green made this same claim, that nazis were socialists, and the washington post debunked it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/29/greenes-ahistorical-claim-that-nazis-were-socialists/
DeleteThe evidence is overwhelming that both Hitler and Mussolini were socialists. Don't believe me? Both said so themselves:
Delete'"I am a socialist.” - Hitler, from his "Zweites Buch" (Second Book) Page 50.
Fascism had a typical far right philosophy: it was nationalist, anti-immigrant, anti-labor union, racist, militaristic and authoritarian. Spanish fascists fought socialist and democratic groups in their civil war. Benito Mussolini’s thugs beat socialists in the streets of Italy, and socialists were among the first groups the Nazis sent to concentration camps. Hitler used the term "Socialism" because it was popular. Hitler also praised the Immigration Act of 1924. He based many of his ideas off the Jim Crow South.
DeletePhilosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that "Fascists are never content to merely lie; they must transform their lie into a new reality, and they must persuade people to believe in the unreality they’ve created. And if you get people to do that, you can convince them to do anything." This screams MAGA.
To say fascism is rooted in left wing ideology is denying the actual facts.
Mussolini coined the term fascist, and defined it himself as right wing: "We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century." Nazis chose the socialist branding, we shouldn't believe Nazis when they lie for political power.
DeleteS Young...your long message is totally misinformed and wrong. Hitler specifically stated he was a socialist.
DeleteCheck out his second book:
https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-LJ6TYTWXd-mi-Hxg/Zweites%20Buch%20%28Hitler%27s%20Secret%20Book%29_djvu.txt
In the beginning of chapter five he states: "I am a socialist"
Your major confusion lies in the fact that he disliked COMPETING socialist groups: Bolshevism and Marxists.
Racism is as much a disease of the left than the right. Margaret Sanger and many of the progressives though black were inferior and pushed sterilization and abortion of "inferior" races. I could give you a dozen other examples of extreme racism on the left. And we should not forget that the left often suffers from vicious antisemitism, as it is doing now regarding Israel.
Nothing...please see my comment to S Young. That article is very weak and incorrect. Congresswoman Green was correct. Hitler admitted he was a socialist. So did Mussolini...cliff
DeleteWalter.... Fascism can just as easily be on the left as the right. You name the abuse that you suggest as Fascist.... I will provide you with ten examples of it occurring on the left...cliff
DeletePatchwap....you are not correct. Fascism is just as much on the left as the right. The left is just as good and frequent with lies as the right. Accusing Trump of being in league with the Russians was a total fabrication...on the left. The Trump administration was a very strong supporter of Israel by the way. Much more so than the Obama folks. ...cliff
DeleteAccording to the Oxford English Dictionary, Fascism is "a member of the far-right National Socialist German Workers' Party".
ReplyDeleteBut I am dismayed by the general deterioration of Seattle, although I live just north of the Snohomish county line. I am willing to admit that I am sort of puzzled. I was uncomfortable with the "Defund the Police" slogan of the city council. A better slogan would have been "Retrain the police". I am still puzzled by the spike in crime. I suspect that Covid lockdowns, with the resulting loss of social connections, played a role, but that should be recovering by now (most cities have improving crime rates, I read). In Seattle, I think it continues in part because of expensive housing, widened gap between rich and poor, understaffed police departments, and the continuing problem with fentanyl. Donald Trump's rhetoric, with an undercurrent of disdain for the rules, may also be partly responsible, after all, this started on his watch.
Unfortunately, it's not just Seattle. I'm W across the water where crime - both property and personal - drug use and homelessness are increasing while police staffing is declining. IMO it's more a 'sign of the times', at least for what I know of CA, OR and WA, although perhaps more extreme in the cities.
ReplyDeleteI think you need to distinguish between the political system and the economic system. Facism is a combination of a dictatorial (authoritarian) political system with typically a somewhat socialistic economic system. Communism supposedly has a democratic political system, but not in reality. Communism also obviously has a socialistic economic system. So you are correct in saying that facism and communism in reality are not too different. That being said, facism is categorized as right wing because of its strong authoritarian aspects. For this same reason so-called communist countries should also be categorized as right wing. A true left wing government would be something like the Nordic countries. I think the chaos in Seattle is actually left wing, because it is not authoritarian. It's just an unorganized mess so far as I can tell. But it's not fasicm.
ReplyDeleteAuthoritarian governments have occurred on the left as much as on the right. I can give you many examples--including many communist countries.
DeleteIt's the neo-left fascists that scare me the most. The blending of the left and right taking place in the country is strange, and the more they claim to be different from each other, the more they seem to be cut from the same cloth. I came from the far-left but it is no longer recognizable to me. Your description of Seattle is the same for my large Oregon town, esp. the politics. It's weird that you have to combine politics with a WEATHER BLOG (sorry). Thank you for the great weather info and I give a huge razzleberry to all of your detractors.
ReplyDeleteI was born in Seattle, though I'm on the East Side now, via China and Japan. It is such a beautiful city, this is heart-breaking. I get the feeling a lot of those who have been ruining the town (like Sawant) are outsiders who really don't care, or just incredibly stupid. But what scares me is how these destructive ideologies are taught in the schools -- as a teacher myself, I have seen plenty of that.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the analogy to Nazi Germany breaks down with the events that followed. After Krystalnacht, homelessness open drug use and crime did not ensue in Germany. Qu8te the opposite.
ReplyDeleteDon't understand your point. The countries and populations are different. But both had political violence driven by those who did not accept other viewpoints and ideas. Today, a mob was on the UW campus pushing for the deaths of millions of Jews. Just like in the 1930s. Perhaps there are more similarities to Nazi Germany than you care to admit...
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