Now they tell us we’re surrounded by dams that are going to give way and flood our communities the next time it rains hard, or even if somebody forgets to turn off a garden hose somewhere. Fortunately, we got all of our bridges repaired, so we can move right ahead and tackle this problem with good old American …

Hold on a second. We did get that done, didn’t we? I remember a major interstate bridge collapsing in Minneapolis a few years ago, and then after the global economy also collapsed, I recall the federal government shipping out boxcars full of money to create jobs and make America a better place.

But now I’m not sure we fixed the bridges. It is so easy to get distracted, what with YouTube and everything.

It sure would be nice to check something off the to-do list once in a while, because we seem to bump into one serious problem after another around here. The next thing you know, we’ll find out that President Obama forgot to pay the rent, and Canada will just move right in.

Regarding the recent dam collapse at Lake Delhi, the question is whether you, the taxpayer, or “chump,” should help rebuild it.

Without a dam, the good folks who built vacation homes would be left with nothing but poignant memories and ruined investments; in other words, they would be like me. So if you taxpayers do decide to help them out monetarily, I’d like to schedule a meeting sometime.

But of course the public shouldn’t have to help, even though Gov. Culver is currently very interested in helping anyone tall enough to operate a voting machine. If you want to have a private dam, and you don’t get around to making the repairs that are indicated, and you don’t have insurance, it’s just possible that things will come to a bad end. As my high school physics teacher used to point out while we flailed about for answers, there’s no magic.

We bailed out evil moneylenders a couple of years ago, but that’s because we absolutely need that grease to keep the nation sliding forward. We probably could get along without Lake Delhi.

However, admitting that we can’t afford to rebuild a minor dam is one more reminder that, as a nation, we have lost a lot of momentum.

Long ago, the United States could quickly piece together a continent-wide railroad network, followed by a telegraph system and, eventually, Pizza Huts.

Once we were a nation with enough ambition and cash to construct a vast web of interstate highways so travelers could rapidly and conveniently reach their destinations without stopping to buy anything in your hometown.

We were a society where President Kennedy could look past a girlfriend’s bouffant hairdo, see the moon, and say, “I just thought of a way to tick off the Russians.” A few years later, we had men on the lunar surface, complaining to Mission Control that there was nothing to do but pick up rocks.

Now our bridges are cracking, our dams are washing away, but we keep putting more money into first-round National Football League draft picks than into infrastructure.

Citizens who have prospered in our nicely rigged society are looking around for third homes and collectible Corvettes; they’re not too interested in spending money on fixing potholes. They figure the underclass can just drive more slowly, having no exotic places to go.

Maybe you’ve seen some episodes of “Life After People” on TV. They explore what might happen to man-made structures if human beings suddenly disappeared from Earth.

Well, it’s becoming obvious that people don’t really have to vanish for the forces of nature to reclaim our best engineering projects. If we keep putting our money into vacations and video games instead of rebar and rivets, Mother Nature eventually gets most of her planet back. She is nothing if not persistent.