Conservative Killing

“Who’s done more research on the subject than the good people at the American Tobacco Industry?  They say it’s harmless.  Why would they lie?  If you’re dead, you can’t smoke.” – Roy Munson, Kingpin

It’s all about branding.  By calling themselves conservationists, big game trophy hunters can defend their desire to kill endangered animals as saving lives.  My sister once dated a Navy SEAL who bragged about how many people he was liberating, which she later learned was code for kills.  The big oil execs care about the environment that their industry has been exploiting; let’s put them in charge of policy.  Surely the fox who has spent his entire life trying to enter the henhouse is the best person to be assigned Warden.

Tess Thompson Talley bragged about taking out a black giraffe that was too old to breed. Post-menopausal women, beware!  TTT’s prey was 18 years old.  The average life expectancy is 20 – 25 years in the wild, assuming that a huntress with a big gun from Kentucky doesn’t find you first.  Most living species would gladly give up the last two to seven years of life for the chance to make a girl’s lifetime dream hunt come true.  People in Kentucky have been warning for years that big, scary, eighteen years-old, tall, blacks want to kill their white women, so this was a case of self-defense, or predisposal of a predator in the making.  Unless they can play basketball for UK or Louisville, in which case they are sacred bulls (or wildcats, cardinals, giraffes, whatever).

“Conservation through game management” is a great concept.  It’s the same reason I eat hamburgers, to prevent stampeding cows from over-running the planet (running of the bullshit).  When I went on safari in South Africa in 2016, I saw a lot of giraffes.  I hate to admit, I thought about killing every one of those tall mother-neckers.  Arrogant ungulates, looking down upon me and sticking their crazy-long tongues out.  If I’d only known that I’d be doing them a favor, I might have run some down with my rental car (I had the extra insurance).

The Safari Club International and everyone’s favorite National Rifle Association were the concerned parties that lobbied / sued to overturn Obama’s ban on trophy elephants. Trump, despite his prior protestations that he’d be “very hard pressed to change my mind that this horror show in any way helps conservation of Elephants or any other animal”, realized that he was seemingly defending something from Obama, and quickly corrected course.

The Safari Club is a group of hunters who care about their right to hunt exotic animals. They pay blood good money to take down exciting fauna, and that money is used to support safe zones for said fauna to be protected from poachers, who would otherwise kill those same animals for free.

NRA just wants to sell the same guys and gals their big guns. They don’t necessarily support the sport, but until the animals learn to use their hooves more effectively and earn some buying power, they will be on the receiving end of the barrel.  Just like schoolkids.  Everyone knows that the only way to stop a hunter with an appetite for blood is to arm an animal with a bigger gun, but guns aren’t free, just destructive tools of freedom.

Is TTT a monster like Triple H? Yes, she is.  Except that he’s an actor playing a role, and while he’s likely hurt many willing participants in staged stunts, to my knowledge, the big guy has never used a gun to kill a four-thousand-pound animal that had not signed up for the match (if Triple T used a chair to kill the black giraffe in a steel cage match, I might change my opinion of her).

Walter Palmer used his skills of dentistry (and a bow and arrow and a gun) to defang Cecile the Lion. Is the world not a better place because of it?

Hunting may or may not be wrong, inhumane, etc. Just like eating meat.  Or abortion.  Or orange presidents.  People have strong opinions for and against all kinds of issues.  Technically, Tess Thompson Talley didn’t break any laws.  OJ was found not guilty of murder.  Trump has not been proven to have colluded (yet).  Live and let live, unless you prefer to live and pay a lot of money to pose next to something beautiful that used to live but is now your stuffed collectible.  Taxidermy is a dying industry, like coal.  To each his own.  For my part, I prefer my safari animals breathing, my lunches meaty, my kid named Teddy unaborted (the rest are not my problem), and my orange president on the path to impeachment.  But those are just my preferences.  I only hope that TTT (or another armed Kentucky Kevorkian) does not decide that I’ve lived past the point of usefulness and take me out any time soon.

I am curious, for people like Walter or Triple T or Donny Jr., who have ample wealth to afford an expensive excursion to the private game reserves of Africa and who profess concern about the future of these creatures, is there any world wildlife fund that would take their charitable donations to protect the animals without having to kill them first? Just wondering.

[Sorry for anyone who saw my title and thought I’d talk about killing conservatives.  Homicide is wrong, and it might lead to the perverse preservation of their species.]