In the Fall of Rome, Good News for America.
The October Atlantic just arrived and I was immediately intrigued by James Fallows fascinating article. Actually, it's a response to Peter Mellon's, The World of Late Antiquity and the new book, Walter Scheidel's Escape from Rome. Fallows argues that though the US government is essentially sterile and self-paralyzed, he's found a terrific amount of resilience in state and local governments. In fact, he's found that state and local government, and for certain large private organizations and universities, the country is mainly functional--in exactly areas where national governance has failed.
Especially enlightening is "that by large margins, Americans feel dissatisfied with the course of national events--and by even larger margins, they feel satisfied with and connected to local institutions and city governments." An American Enterprise Institute team found that 80 percent of Americans found their own town to be an excellent or good place to live. And 70 percent said they trusted people in their own neighborhood. . .
The situation jives with Scheidel's conclusion that the single condition essential for all this creativity after the fall of Rome was the fragmentation of power. And this fragmentation is appearing all around us. Yes, I too deeply appreciate my community and all its opportunities and numerous friends. My weekly coffee includes both sexes, retired college faculty, working and retired business people, ordinary laborers, retired city politicians, a supreme court administrator, lawyers, a psychologist and even some Somali politicos.The conversation is both fun and heady! Very stimulating.
Half way through the article, Fallows reveals that after writing about a “can do” attitude in local governments in Maine and South Carolina, I got an email from a mayor in the Midwest. He said that he thought the underreported story of the moment was how people frustrated with national-level politics were shifting their enthusiasm and their careers to the state and local levels, where they could make a difference. (That mayor’s name was Pete Buttigieg, then in his first term in South Bend, Indiana.) When I spoke with him at the time, he suggested the situation was like people fleeing the world of Veep—bleak humor on top of genuine bleakness—for a non-preposterous version of Parks and Recreation.
Buttigieg's name just keeps creeping up in the most intriguing places.