The Emerald City has become notorious for homelessness and drug abuse. The underlying cause is a socioeconomic malignancy that has spread nationwide.
“I don’t have the passion anymore, and so remember, it’s better to burn out than to fade away.”
So reads the most well-known line from Kurt Cobain’s suicide note, penned in his private residence only a short drive from Seattle’s Belltown district. The artistic incubator that was 1980s Belltown gave us grunge bands like Cobain’s Nirvana, Cornell’s Soundgarden, and Vedder’s Pearl Jam, a collection of sonic revolutionaries whose music served as anthems for a generation fed up with the duplicity and monochrome conformity of the corporatized West. Like most counterculture movements, though, it wasn’t meant to last.
While Cobain’s final words in April 1994 marked the unofficial conclusion of the grunge era, his death also served as a demarcation line for Seattle’s identity. In 1996, local coffee chain Starbucks opened its first international store.
A year prior to that, Redmond-based Microsoft released Windows 95, which Forbes lists as the most important computer operating system of all time. And in the summer of 1994, only a few months following Cobain’s death, Jeff Bezos started a business out of his garage in Bellevue. He decided to call it Amazon.
At warp speed, the metaphorical winds shifted. Emergent corporate titans began taking control of the city. Unimaginable fortunes were made. Collateral damage is an ongoing calculation.
“Underneath the bridge, tarp has sprung a leak” – “Something in the Way” by Nirvana
The most grotesque feature of modern Seattle is its skyline. When viewed from disconnected vantage points like the Space Needle or Kerry Park, the tall buildings and state-of-the-art sports stadiums provide a resplendent urban foreground for Puget Sound and nearby Mount Rainier. Descend into Belltown, however, and you quickly see the gross irresponsibility of the city’s wealth projection.
Literally in the shadow of some of the most prosperous and powerful corporations on the planet, homelessness is a rampant problem throughout Seattle. You don’t have to search to find it.
Our first stop in Belltown was Black Dog Forge, an underground practice space in a back alleyway that was formerly used by Pearl Jam and Soundgarden during the grunge heyday. In the few minutes we stayed, no less than three homeless gentlemen strolled past, pushing their belongings in shopping carts covered with tarps.
Less than a mile to the southeast at the entrance to Pike Place Market, droves of drug addicts congregated as the more fortunate gave a wide berth. These are the pariahs of Seattle, the undesirables that mega-rich corporations like Amazon, Microsoft, Costco, Starbucks, and Alaska Airlines choose to overlook from their high-rises as they vacuum up trillions of combined dollars a short distance away.
Many of the despondent throng gathered around old-school boom boxes, moving erratically to the rhythm of the song as whatever illicit uppers they were able to score coursed through their veins.
Others sat by in a trance, strung out on some type of opioid. Fentanyl is a serious issue in Seattle, just like it is throughout much of America. Growing inequality, fueled by near-unfettered corporate capitalism, will only worsen the epidemic.
But don’t waste your time sounding the alarm; the captains of industry can’t hear you and wouldn’t give a damn, anyway. They’re too busy blasting off into outer space to address the terrestrial consequences caused from building their respective empires. Those problems have been handed off to the rest of us.
“Hate if you wanna hate” – “My Wave” by Soundgarden
When it comes to politics in America, it’s my bunker against your silo, my town against your city, my coast against your prairie. One camp harbors varying degrees of hatred for the other due to differing viewpoints.
Akin to an absurd script from professional wrestling, the heroes and villains are apparently obvious on the surface, but is it all a larger game of subterfuge? Without a doubt. More like a British crime novel, the real perpetrators are lurking in plain sight.
Seattle has become a favorite piñata for political pundits on right-wing television. Here’s the usual scene on set: The exasperated expert from insert-your-think-tank-or-institution-name-here opens by rattling off rehearsed rants regarding homelessness, crime, and drug abuse.
After throwing out a litany of misleading facts from dubious sources, he or she concludes by blaming the left-wing radical (air quotes/sarcastic delivery at the ready) “government” for their outrageously incompetent bungling of the whole ordeal. Cue alarmed co-anchor face and all-caps chyron, put the next set of prescription drug commercials on deck.
Satire aside, there is some truth in this overused, over-the-top diatribe; elected officials should shoulder some of the responsibility for the shortcomings found within their realm of representation. The problem with the argument, however, is it’s based on the premise that the American political system operates under a purely democratic ruleset. While we unquestionably live in a free society, elected officials in our country are actually more like sports league commissioners who make key decisions based upon the bidding of wealthy team owners.
To use another analogy, politicians are the pipers, and C-suite execs and their fellow boardroom plutocrats are the moneymen. And those who pay the piper call the tune.
“All been washed in black, tattooed everything” – “Black” by Pearl Jam
Sorry to interrupt your political silo’s regularly redundant programming, but Seattle’s sad story isn’t relegated to the Looney Left Coast. It can instead be found from sea to shining sea. I would know; I grew up in the rural Appalachian foothills of North Alabama.
Much like cities in the Pacific Northwest, my former home region of charming towns, scenic waterfalls, and wooded vistas has been decimated by the all-too-familiar symptoms of rising inequality. The only difference in perception is there are far fewer journalists and television cameras to document the carnage, one also caused by unchecked corporate greed.
This feature article is the first installment of a series on imminent threats facing the Western world. Click to read the second part “Lisbon: A Warning to the Free World.”
Along with Cobain’s death and the founding of Amazon, there was another watershed moment in 1994: the passing of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by the Clinton administration. The piece of legislation, which established free trade between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, had a far more profound impact on my perception of the world than the death of grunge or the future convenience of two-day package delivery. Population disparities aside, NAFTA was just as significant to my hometown in the mid-1990s as the simultaneous rise of super corporations was to Seattle.
My memory is spotty from my childhood, but I do recall the feeling of doom that gripped the region as factories bolted for the southern border. Many families in my county relied on textile manufacturing to carve out honest livings. The Buster Brown plant in my hometown was the glue that held the community together. Once it left, even a young kid could notice the changes.
Three decades later, drug abuse and poverty are persistent problems in North Alabama. Rural communities are now better defined as loose confederations of residential properties mixed with oft-abandoned light commercial buildings and less as traditionally strong social structures. Just like in Seattle, many locals predictably blame politicians for the plight. Others point at outsiders, particularly Latinos, who they misguidedly believe stole the region’s livelihood.
I decided a long time ago that the real issue is the rules of engagement – or lack thereof – that regulate corporate money in America. According to our economic doctrine, it’s in bounds to abruptly leave a rural community high and dry by moving a factory across international borders purely to increase profit margin. Corporations – and specifically the plutocrats that run them – can also rest easy that there won’t be repercussions for driving swaths of cities like Seattle into a spiraling state of destitution.
It’s wrong, and it’s unsustainable.
“And one more special message to go” – “On a Plain” by Nirvana
I love Seattle. Not the current corporatized façade, mind you. My affection is attached to the remnants of the old Emerald City vibe that live on in places like the Crocodile, Showbox, and Black Dog Forge. Personified by the artistry of the grunge greats, the real Seattle is gritty and tough, and it’s also independent and free thinking to the point of rebellion. I admire each of those qualities; nothing groundbreaking ever happened without them.
Features like this one normally end with gloom hanging in the air, but I’m going in a different direction. Pointing out problems is unhelpful unless you are actively trying to find solutions. I believe the most potent antidote for a plutocracy is a cohesively moderate and multilogical populous unwilling to accept the same old failed solutions to complex problems. Money must start working for the collective, but it will never do so unless we first start mending fences.
Question for my partisan countrywomen and countrymen: What the hell is wrong with a well-meaning, well-informed citizen – with no hidden racist agenda, ulterior misogynistic motive, or other assorted socially depraved axe to grind – arriving at a different political conclusion than your own? Great policy that works for everyone happens at the center of the political aisle, but we don’t have constructively difficult conversations anymore.
The only ones who will ever benefit from government gridlock are the robber barons at the top of the corporate food chain and their cast of supporting characters (looking at you celebrity endorsers, influencers, and other complicit cults of personality with alleged esoteric knowledge on what it takes to be “successful” and “happy”). They should be regarded as the primary perpetrators gunking up the political works.
Moderation requires a level of universal human understanding. If you are starting the journey toward the middle or simply interested in a new perspective, here’s a couple of helpful sources.
Those from the cities and suburbs can get a compelling look at the struggles of marginalized rural America by watching films written by Academy Award nominee and North Texas rancher Taylor Sheridan. I would start with Hell or High Water (starring Chris Pine and Jeff Bridges) and Wind River (featuring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen).
Everyone would benefit from reading the book The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die (2017) by Keith Payne, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Despite being an academic, Payne explains in layman’s terms how inequality adversely affects the human organism all the way down to the cellular level. Let there be no confusion: If unreversed, the widening gap between the haves and have-nots will be our society’s downfall.
And finally, let’s not lose the passion for the American experiment. Instead, start seeing the country’s crisis of disunity for what it really is. Struggling urban zones like Seattle may be portrayed as repulsive and contemptible by certain sections of the media, but I can tell you from firsthand observation that they are ailing from the same plutocratic disease afflicting other areas such as the Deep South.
We must fight the illness with wisdom, working toward a day when the plurality of the citizenry is equipped to articulate and demand change that works for everyone.
Related Content
– Click to read my feature article “Lisbon: A Warning to the Free World,” the second half of this series of articles on imminent threats facing the Western world.
– Click to view my high-resolution photo collection from my trip through Washington.
– Click to read my feature article “Out West: The Fight to Protect Our Federal Public Lands” for an in-depth look at how the fossil fuels industry is posing an unprecedented threat to America’s protected spaces.