In the world of words, one of my best-loved tribes is the diatribe.
Platitude: a statement that denies by implication what it explicitly affirms.
All dams are ugly, but the Glen Canyon Dam is sinful ugly.
New Yorkers like to boast that if you can survive in New York, you can survive anywhere. But if you can survive anywhere, why live in New York?
The earth is real. Only a fool, milking his cow, denies the cow's reality.
We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.