I’m sure it was a mystery to many of the people around here who got a living from these factories, who felt strong, willing, and able to trade their labor for a decent paycheck. How could the world not need them anymore?  American political leadership explained it rather poorly to them. This was a new economy, they said. From now on making a living in America would be all about being clever at cooking up “innovations” that the rest of the people in the world could use in order to churn things out for us at twenty cents an hour. America’s young people, they said, should go to college, even if it meant taking on a lifetime of loan obligations. Or enroll at the local community college to learn “computer technology,” the coming thing.

What really happened to places like Hudson Falls is now painfully visible on-the-ground, in the streets, and in the shopfront windows, which are either vacant or occupied by the most marginal businesses – martial arts studios (training for what? Gang war? Insurrection? Afghanistan?), second-hand shops, and the ubiquitous pizza joints for a cheese-hungry populace. The once dignified business blocks at the small center of town – itself perched on a bluff with a panoramic view west – are vacant and falling into gross disrepair. The owner class of citizen, still inveighed against in progressive radio circles, are so gone that their ghosts seem to have packed up and left, too. But then so is every other class of people above the nether-class – that is, people engaged in something other than subsidized idleness and crime, people who’s only obligation in life is waking up in the morning. (No wonder the nation is obsessed with zombies these days.) I passed a wedding late in the afternoon on my way out of town.  The bride had a tattoo the size of bumper-sticker on her décolletage. The groomsmen were dressed in black baby shorts and backwards hats. You want to weep for their offspring.

I only saw them on the way out.  All the rest of the long day, I was blessedly alone under a fierce sun on the far side of the river, in close observation of the visual details of history and the quality of the day.  It is hard to imagine the determination and ingenuity (not to mention strength and sweat) it took to pile up all these buildings right next to this raging river, or to fling a concrete dam across it. I don’t see how we could do that now, since we seem collectively incapable of accomplishing anything anymore – except some phony new political disposition of foot-dragging, evasion of responsibility, or refusal to confront reality.

The reality I spend these days rambling the river with is the reality of a nation riding a great wave of entropy into the unknown. Only at this stage of the ride can we indulge in our Goth fantasies of the charming vampire nether-life. Believe me, when things really get dark we will all be wishing desperately for something more like lambs-in-the-meadow and the kindly touch of a loving hand and the dim memory of what it was like to care about anything or anyone.

Where we are now, to me, is the real dark time, the proverbial moment before the dawn. The depravity of our culture, Disney merchandise, cool ranch Doritos, and all, is something that people of the future will marvel at for centuries to come. The purity of our surrender will fascinate them. They will conclude that we looked into the abyss… and decided that we liked what we saw in there.