The decline of rural Upstate New York is, in many ways, our greatest strength. It's a kind of weird paradox that many people miss.

Though we have many problems, we don't seem to have very many of the kinds of problems Americans have elsewhere. Housing is dirt-cheap; "Progress" seems to have skipped us over. There is no traffic, no ugly sprawl, no condos, no rainbow flags, no yuppies leering over our shoulders, basically no immigrants. We almost never see police -- codes enforcement is almost unheard of. We never really feel "watched" like we do in more "up and coming" locations. We have no real fear of our place being "discovered" because frankly, most people can't handle the taxes, the weather, the decrepitude, and the isolation.

Sure, the taxes are awful. The drug situation is bad. The gun laws are illegal, and the government in Albany is virtually a failed state here. There are many drawbacks.

But overall, it feels like we've just been "sitting out" the last round or two of American history. Like whatever ember the Brave New World we've built has extinguished elsewhere continues to burn brightly here. Some old, tattered, ancient vestige of Old America thrives here, in secrecy, behind the ruins and the dysfunction.

That, I believe, will be our greatest strength in the end. And so paradoxically, I am grateful for the decline of deep rural Upstate New York. It has given us a weird, accidental kind of protection from the worst of the last 30 years.

From this perspective, "fixing Upstate New York" just sounds awful. It sounds like welcoming the ghastly homogenization that has taken root elsewhere in America; like beckoning demons into our doors. If we "fix" this place, it will simply become Just Like Everywhere Else very, very quickly.

And so I pray we never "fix it."