It's been some morning. It started with 428 wolves, then I came here read Granny Doc's diary, and NCrissieB's diary, and a couple of others, and I just want to weep. Can't you see the big picture?
The first news item I read this morning was an editorial from the New York time about 428 Wolves that are going to die in Idaho this year. Do you care? You should. Because now that wolves are no longer on the endangered list, their protection will be left to the states, and Idaho is getting ready to hand out enough wolf-hunting licenses to reduce the state's wolf population by nearly half. There are a thousand wolves in Idaho now, and 428 of them will die.
Why should you care, when so many important things are going on like, say, FISA? Oh, maybe because biologists have been astonished at how fast and well the environment, both plant and animal, have been improved by the reintroduction of wolves. Or maybe because wolves rank high on the list of things for which we have shown such callous disregard over the years that we nearly wiped them out. Their struggle is sign of our own sickness.
Or maybe you should care because diaries about our damaged and increasingly dangerous climate get barely a nod here because it's easier to argue about the tree than the forest?
I want to cry because 428 wolves are going to die. Because they're a symptom of our larger neglect of the very foundations of our lives and our democracy. Too many of you are like specialists in medicine, like the one who killed my mother because he was a pulmonologist and when she complained of difficulty breathing and thirty excess pounds of water that had turned her ankles into grapefruits, he said "We'll increase your oxygen so you can breathe better." He saw the tree, her emphysema, and never noticed the forest, her congestive heart failure.
I want to cry because my nephew is flying Cobra helicopters in Iraq for you. He'll never be the same bright, beautiful young man he was, even if he survives physically intact. When he comes home he's going to have to deal with nightmares many of YOU can't even imagine. But FISA is the topic of the day, and more important than ensuring the election of a man who has vowed to get us out of Iraq.
Have you been betrayed? No. YOU have betrayed your world. You care about a tree and cry betrayal, ignoring the rest of the forest while the congestive heart failure of war and climate change continue to eat away the very foundations we need to ensure a healthy, bright and free future for our children. You'll sieze on every little thing you can scream about without seeing that we're dying.
So 428 wolves are going to die. You may save that tree, but the forest will be gone when you do.