Will the world ever survive without Cecil the lion?
After the allegedly famous predator was killed for sport earlier this month, the big cat’s death slowly became a viral outrage sensation.
While questions swirl over the legality of the lion’s killing, legal issues aren’t driving the rage toward the Minnesota dentist who slew the big cat.
Many critics are incensed that someone would take pleasure in hunting down such a beautiful creature like Cecil the lion. Or, really for that matter, any creature. As it has become quite obvious, this story derives its immense energy from the hatred upper-class white liberals have for hunting.
Jimmy Kimmel made that clear in his emotional monologue on the subject — why would anyone think it’s fun to shoot an animal?
While Zimbabwe — the country where Cecil dwelled — has no idea what lion the West is talking about and has zero concern for the story, American media have turned this deceased feline into a martyr for liberal values.
Hunting is bad because killing any living thing is inherently evil, the thinking goes. Even if we attain our meat through a much crueler process than what befell poor Cecil, millions of Americans appear to be more than willing to take on the cognitive dissonance to denounce the big game hunter Walter Palmer.
And Palmer has suffered the consequences.
He’s had to shutter his dental office due to the large number of protesters setting up shop outside the office. He’s facing death threats. There’s even a demand to extradite him to Zimbabwe so he can be executed for killing Cecil — from PETA, of all groups.
It goes without saying that the father of two is now ruined due to an Internet lynch mob that feels his act was barbarism incarnate.
Palmer killed a supposedly famous lion that was being used for research purposes. It appears it wasn’t his fault, though. Instead, the fault lies more with his guides who were responsible for the alleged illegality of the kill. That’s why they were the ones initially charged in a Zimbabwe court for their transgression, not Palmer.
However, in a probable PR move, the southern African state is now seeking the extradition of the 55-year-old dentist to stand trial for the hunt.
But that probably won’t stop the anti-violence mob from calling for the blood of the law-abiding dentist. It’s funny that the crowd that gets heartbroken when our justice system gives sadistic murderers death sentences wants to have a corrupt, foreign dictatorship execute an American citizen for the legally disputed killing of a non-human.
All because murdering any living thing is bad, bad, bad.
Obviously, there’s a severe lack of reason going on in this hysteria, which probably explains why there’s so much hypocrisy here.
We can see the hypocrisy in the fact that the land where Cecil lived is one of the worst places to be a human on Earth — yet no attention seems to be paid Zimbabwe’s people in all the fuss surrounding a lion.
It’d be akin to America going nuts over a slain crocodile in Cambodia while Pol Pot is committing genocide — and we completely overlook the genocide part.
Zimbabwe is ruled by arguably the most vicious and corrupt despot living today, Robert Mugabe. Mugabe has managed to accumulate an extensive record of human rights abuses that would make past tyrants jealous. He’s a big fan of using torture, forced mass evictions, child soldiers and extrajudicial killings against political opponents. For example, when a rival was poised to seriously challenge the tyrant in an upcoming election, Mugabe’s followers murdered nearly 100 opponents and forced 200,000 people from their homes.
It goes without saying that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are two values not found in Zimbabwe.
The nation is also home to one of the most corrupt judicial systems on the planet. That’s the same judicial system that’s now being called upon to try, convict and execute Walter Palmer.
The African tyrant also has a penchant for stirring up racial hatred for the few whites who remain in his country. After forcing the majority of Caucasian residents to leave when he took power in 1980, Mugabe still likes to indulge in animus towards lighter-skinned people. Last year, the dictator decreed that whites should not be able to own land and ordered the forcible seizure of their property. (RELATED: Zimbabwe Has 99 Problems And White People Are All Of Them)
In May, while eating two lions not too dissimilar from Cecil at his 91st birthday bash, Mugabe went on a rant against “white safaris” ruining his country — even though these safaris bring vital cash to one of the most poverty-stricken nations in the world.
And it’s not just their own government that Zimbabweans have to worry about. In nearby South Africa, Zimbabwean immigrants are at risk of being burned alive through the savage local practice of necklacing — all because they are Zimbabwean.
Rural villagers in Zimbabwe also have to live with the threat of being attacked by marauding lions, which could explain why the average person cares little that a predator they never heard of was hunted down.
While Mugabe’s shameful human rights record and the necklacing of Zimbabweans in South Africa both qualify as justifiable outrages, neither inhumanity elicits much attention from Americans or prominent left-wing groups.
Maybe it’s because many young Americans have come to associate lions with cherished moments of their childhood, thanks to “The Lion King” and the prevalence of Beanie Babies. As we all know, there’s no popular children’s film about a white family having to flee their farm because of their skin color or toys of necklaced Zimbabweans.
We as a nation look downright stupid when we go nuts over a dead animal while ignoring the crimes committed against humans in the same land.
It’s time American liberals put down the stuffed animals and look at the world as it really is.