"Donald Trump Blasts The Heads Off Of Tiny Woodland Creatures!"
“Donald Trump Blasts The Heads off of Tiny Woodland Creatures!”
Yesterday I wrote a response to the continuous allegations made by the media that President Trump was going to allow the slaughter of protected animals. In particular, elephants. As usual, the allegations were mostly nonsense, intended to stoke outrage and were being used as political fodder.
There are a lot of people who love animals, myself included, who would be outraged if President Trump did what he was being accused of doing. Here’s what the press would have you believe. This appears to be the Donald Trump that exists in their imaginations:
“Who needs elephants, lions and tigers! I’m all for shooting em’ dead. So’s I can have big trophies in my mansion. And, if you don’t like it, you can blow it out your ass!”
That’s how it gets presented in the press, as just one more example of how tone-deaf the man is to normal humans, which is really surprising, since he won the presidency with no ground game, a fraction of Hillary Clinton’s war-chest, and virtually no media support except FOX News. That, however, can be explained by Russia.
Explanations of this sort, offering one word, maybe two, a meme, a slogan, are the best kind. They require no thought. No facts. Just lot’s on innuendo and cryptic sounding verbiage. I mean, Newsweek published an article excoriating President Trump for taking a drink of water in the middle of a press conference. This was followed, literally, by an analysis of Trump’s tiny hands, which, apparently, were too small to hold a bottle of water. The “Journalist” in question then contacted the company about the size of Trump’s water bottle, in an effort to prove their theory that Donald Trump is a tiny-handed president. Therefore, he is unworthy of holding office and should be impeached immediately. Let me stress, this is not a joke, it is Newsweek. When it comes to Trump, this kind of hyperbolic bullshit is hardly rare.
But I digress.
Let’s get back to elephants, Komodo dragons, lions and tigers, and whatever indiscriminate slaughter of protected species is being attributed to Donald Trump, alias Baron Von Evil.
Poaching and unlimited hunting have decimated animal populations in Africa. Severe restrictions on hunting helped to bring these animals back from the brink of extinction. The real problem today is poachers. Poachers thrive because abject poverty in Africa makes it one of the few viable ways to survive. We’re not talking about American-style poverty, here, which isn’t poverty by any real-world measure. We’re talking about starvation kind-of poverty. This is true, in spite of massive foreign aid. As the result, Africans have found that allowing wealthy foreigners to hunt very limited numbers of protected animals can bring in millions of desperately needed dollars in fees and tourist trade. This, in turn, funds the conservation of both protected lands and animals. In the absence of a viable economy, poaching only grows, which inevitably leads to extinction, not preservation.
By encouraging wealthy Americans to hunt these animals, in very limited numbers, the fees for hunting increase, and, in the long run, the net beneficiaries are the animals and the indigenous people. Such is the nature of competition, in a “Free and legal” market. And that’s all this was about, to begin with, allowing Americans who’d already killed the animals, to bring their trophies back to the U.S., not renewed, wholesale slaughter, as is being suggested.
Unfortunately, most of the articles on this subject, are written by Westerners who don’t hunt and are remarkably wealthy by comparison. This is true of even the poorest Americans, giving us a surreal view of the world, more akin to a Disney movie than reality. Africans live a very different life, one deeply connected to nature. They are well aware that few animals live into old age, even without hunting. Meaning, the sacrifice of a few animals to hunters, enables the herd to thrive. That is the way of the world, regardless of what rich Americans choose to believe. Just watch wildebeest crossing crocodile-infested waters, and the reality of this principle is self-evident.
Claude Hopper
Yesterday I wrote a response to the continuous allegations made by the media that President Trump was going to allow the slaughter of protected animals. In particular, elephants. As usual, the allegations were mostly nonsense, intended to stoke outrage and were being used as political fodder.
There are a lot of people who love animals, myself included, who would be outraged if President Trump did what he was being accused of doing. Here’s what the press would have you believe. This appears to be the Donald Trump that exists in their imaginations:
“Who needs elephants, lions and tigers! I’m all for shooting em’ dead. So’s I can have big trophies in my mansion. And, if you don’t like it, you can blow it out your ass!”
That’s how it gets presented in the press, as just one more example of how tone-deaf the man is to normal humans, which is really surprising, since he won the presidency with no ground game, a fraction of Hillary Clinton’s war-chest, and virtually no media support except FOX News. That, however, can be explained by Russia.
Explanations of this sort, offering one word, maybe two, a meme, a slogan, are the best kind. They require no thought. No facts. Just lot’s on innuendo and cryptic sounding verbiage. I mean, Newsweek published an article excoriating President Trump for taking a drink of water in the middle of a press conference. This was followed, literally, by an analysis of Trump’s tiny hands, which, apparently, were too small to hold a bottle of water. The “Journalist” in question then contacted the company about the size of Trump’s water bottle, in an effort to prove their theory that Donald Trump is a tiny-handed president. Therefore, he is unworthy of holding office and should be impeached immediately. Let me stress, this is not a joke, it is Newsweek. When it comes to Trump, this kind of hyperbolic bullshit is hardly rare.
But I digress.
Let’s get back to elephants, Komodo dragons, lions and tigers, and whatever indiscriminate slaughter of protected species is being attributed to Donald Trump, alias Baron Von Evil.
Poaching and unlimited hunting have decimated animal populations in Africa. Severe restrictions on hunting helped to bring these animals back from the brink of extinction. The real problem today is poachers. Poachers thrive because abject poverty in Africa makes it one of the few viable ways to survive. We’re not talking about American-style poverty, here, which isn’t poverty by any real-world measure. We’re talking about starvation kind-of poverty. This is true, in spite of massive foreign aid. As the result, Africans have found that allowing wealthy foreigners to hunt very limited numbers of protected animals can bring in millions of desperately needed dollars in fees and tourist trade. This, in turn, funds the conservation of both protected lands and animals. In the absence of a viable economy, poaching only grows, which inevitably leads to extinction, not preservation.
By encouraging wealthy Americans to hunt these animals, in very limited numbers, the fees for hunting increase, and, in the long run, the net beneficiaries are the animals and the indigenous people. Such is the nature of competition, in a “Free and legal” market. And that’s all this was about, to begin with, allowing Americans who’d already killed the animals, to bring their trophies back to the U.S., not renewed, wholesale slaughter, as is being suggested.
Unfortunately, most of the articles on this subject, are written by Westerners who don’t hunt and are remarkably wealthy by comparison. This is true of even the poorest Americans, giving us a surreal view of the world, more akin to a Disney movie than reality. Africans live a very different life, one deeply connected to nature. They are well aware that few animals live into old age, even without hunting. Meaning, the sacrifice of a few animals to hunters, enables the herd to thrive. That is the way of the world, regardless of what rich Americans choose to believe. Just watch wildebeest crossing crocodile-infested waters, and the reality of this principle is self-evident.
Claude Hopper