Our country is now full of people too stupid to know when they are in danger.
It's a mixture of stupidity and ignorance. Kids are raised on crap like "Bambi" and internalize the idea of benevolent nature and animals with human feelings.
Their parents coddle them and wrap them in cotton wool and make sure they never get a chance to learn about the real world. They are told from the time they can listen that they are special, unique and precious.
The schools spend time puffing up their self-esteem at the expense of challenging them. They are raised to think that getting your hands dirty with actual work is a bad thing.
They have no idea how a car, an air conditioner, or a vacuum cleaner works, and even less idea how to fix one- and they are taught to look down on those that do.
They think that meat just appears in stores neatly wrapped, and recoil in horror at the idea that a real live animal had to be killed to produce it.
They are ignorant and worse, filled with wrong ideas, and they are too lazy and incurious to learn different.
They go to a national park, and they treat it as a slightly more primitive version of Disneyland. They think that railings and signs and rangers are all about to protect them. They swim in cold fast moving water above 500 foot waterfalls, they feed bears and walk off trails in broken country.
They start to ascend 10,000+ foot mountains in sandals and shorts, with no food or water and no plan to follow if anything goes wrong, except to call for help on their cell phone.
I don't know what the solution is except to let Darwin sort them out.
</rant mode-off>
