My incredibly accurate mind-reading ability informs me that the overwhelming majority of people on the planet embrace the politics of apathy.

I deal with environmental movement-type people quite a bit. Many are believers in a sort of ill-defined pantheism. It may be overt--Gaia for example. Or it may be that they don't even recognize it as a faith system but they feel a connectedness with Nature and a need to defend her wild places and furry things. This is not my thing, though I understand why they feel that way. I'm an environmentalist, too. Gimme a tree, I'll hug it.

What bothers me is that they confuse ardent love with reason and knowledge. Many of those folks don't understand forestry or hunting and so forth, they just see trees hacked down and Bambi bleeding. They send-out fliers about the evils of tree harvesting. They drive to the march protesting offshore drilling.

I think lots of people involved in political movements are like that. They are the political equivalent of Napoleon's cannon-fodder soldiers. Ardent believers in the Cause.

B