It's been over three months since my last post, and my more conscientious friends are beginning to make me feel inferior--at least when it comes to blogging. (And many other things, too, actually, but we won't get into that.)

Besides, I actually have something to write about now. Not that many different things have caught my attention, but it feels like there hasn't been anything to supply the necessary activation energy to write.

It's a little surprising, too. I've generally found myself wanting to write whenever I see something or come to a realization that I find unexpected in myself. And that has actually been happening a bit recently. Take, for instance, a piece of mail I got yesterday from "James Carville." On the outside of the envelope is the following text:

He led us into war under false pretenses. He turned trillions in surpluses into trillions in deficits. He sold out our children's health to corporate interests. AND HE WAS JUST GETTING STARTED!

My first thought wasn't the normal rage that fills me when I think of Bush or the election. It was "I wish the Democrats would stop just attacking Bush." Where did that come from? It's not a newfound love for the president's ideas or plans--it's that anti-Bush fervor isn't motivating me the way it used to. I want a party that has principles and stands up for them, and that can produce candidates I actually want to support. Sure, attack letters work some of the time, but it seems that this is ALL I get from them nowadays.

Anyway, something else surprising happened to me this last weekend. Benson and I spent the weekend in Oregon (where we took some photographs) for our fourth anniversary. Oregon--especially the northern coast--is one of the most gorgeous places I've been to. (We stayed at Coast Cabins in Manzanita, Oregon. The cabin was amazing--complete with a private hot tub and sauna. I'd certainly recommend this place to others.)

On the drive were scenes like this:

But there were also many scenes like this:

There were huge sections of trees that had been cut away, presumably for lumber. However, there is a ridiculously large number of trees in Oregon, so even these huge missing patches, as ugly as they looked, just didn't seem like that big a deal.

I was a little surprised at my reasoning and callousness. I could imagine someone that was impassioned about the environment sitting in the car with me and chastising me for not seeing the real problem here--the species that may have been hurt, the fact that this environmental damage is not the same as huge clear-cutting in the rain forests, and perhaps more.

This led me to realize that I have many progressive assumptions without first-hand knowledge of the facts. When we hear about the rain forests getting cut down, how much worse is it than what I saw in Oregon? I honestly don't know--and that is the problem. In the past, if someone had said how we needed to stop clear-cutting in Oregon forests, I would have had a knee-jerk reaction in support of them without looking for all of the facts, or experiencing it myself.

Of course, that's the problem. There is no way for me to research every topic that affects the world, and I certainly can't have first-hand experiences with everything. Instead, I can only focus on a very narrow range of topics, and assume that "allies" and people that think in a generally progressive manner will be honest brokers of information for other topics. Quite often, that works. But can I be expected to fight as loudly for those issues as the ones I know first-hand?

And that brings it back to what many of my entries are about--gay rights and gay marriage. I obviously feel quite strongly about it, and I expect other progressives to feel the same way automatically. But how can I do that if I'm saying I can't do the same thing for their issues?

I'm tempted to say that there is a difference here. Arguments about clear-cutting of forests relies primarily on facts--the species affected, the environmental side effects on water and air, et cetera balanced against the need for jobs. For gay rights, it is not an issue of facts--it is an issue of basic human rights and privacy.

The only problem is, I'm sure environmentalists don't see it that way.

Perhaps the answer is that the expectation of automatic support from other progressives just shouldn't be there--that seeking to provide the full story with a progressive perspective thrown in should be the focus instead.

Edit, 13 May 2005:

Interestingly, it turns out that an environmentalist has posted a "4000-word essay" that uses Google Maps' satellite images to show the effects of clear-cutting in British Columbia. (I found this link on Aldoblog when doing an unrelated search for Google Maps API's.)

politics oregon environment GLBT progressive