Left Behind

We like to think it was a bubble that burst. We like to think that it was the folly of the dot-commers and venture capitalists and lemming investors. We like to think it was an anomaly. We like to think that it's just a matter of time, after perhaps the war has passed, or that awkwardness in North Korea has been ironed out, or the terrorists have all been locked in Guantanamo and left to rot. We like to think that then the world will be happy and safe again.

We like to think that the economy will bounce back, that the jobs will return, that all it takes is a long view and the boom times will eventually return. They all tell us we only need to hold on for twenty years at most, and patience will always pay off.

Well tell that to the textile workers in the east. Tell that to the steel workers in the midwest. They will set you straight. Or maybe they won't, because they can't, because there are no textile workers, and there are no steelworkers left to speak of. We cast them aside a long time ago.

And now, as the tech workers in the west and southwest wait for the good times to return, biding their time making far less than they did, satisfied just to have insurance, the blight is coming.

And while we wave the flag and poke fun at those lunatic Frenchies and lambast the UN and lampoon the peaceniks and their naive notions of right and wrong, we don't see it. We just cling to our memories of the past, unable to acknowledge that in their race to the bottom the captains of American industry are leaving us all behind, taking the last of the boats for themselves.

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