Just to be clear, I have no problem with hunting for resource management or for food, and for those who enjoy it, even for the sport as long as the first two are part of it.
But there is a vast difference between that and this event. Lions are endangered, and it is irrelevant that he paid a large sum for the “privilege” of having one lured to a spot so he can take a shot at it with a weapon with a high probability of leaving it injured and suffering, which he did.
How I eat for sustenance is irrelevant to the discussion of the sport hunting of African mammals by wealthy assholes.
I think that you maneuvered yourself into the untenable position of finding some justification for this reprehensible killing because you were uncomfortable with the piling on. So I can understand that. Given the rest of the evidence that is now out about this dentist, his actions and intentions are clear and indefensible to my mind, so that is what I said.
This is fucking stupid. Why do anything ever about anything? Why leave the house? Might as well just hang ourselves in the bathroom.
What a fucking cop out.
In context here, this is a fucking cop out.
I don’t care if my dentist likes to paint bananas or surf or build model trains. But if I found out he did something like this you fucking better believe I’d take my business elsewhere.
It’s worth noting too that a dentist who’s sexually harassed women before probably doesn’t treat half of their potential patients well, and should definitely not be trusted with any kind of sedative.
Of course, if you don’t fall into that category, well, there’s no big deal there, right?
Well at least one argument is that without the big game hunters making the animals valuable the local population might just kill them all
I’m not sure if I buy it completely but it’s plausible.
Partly, but I’m also trying to be open-minded. There’s lots of things people do that I find personally distasteful, but I don’t want to condemn them just because they come from a different background and have different kinds of hobbies. I could see big game hunting as a useful part of a proper wildlife conservation strategy, it’s not something I’d want to do, but I don’t know if you can make a solid case that it’s fundamentally more wrong than other things.
It’s pretty hypocritical for Western meat eaters to be this upset over the lion killing, especially when most Western countries have already depleted the populations of most of their more “exotic” animals. This lion’s death is a terrible thing, but the meat industry is absolutely devastating to the animals, to the environment, and to consumer health. To be ethically consistent, one must regard trophy hunting and the meat industry with similar degrees of contempt, and yet the news is punctuated with headlines about Cecil, and not about what’s on the dinner table. At least Cecil actually lived free, whereas most animals raised for meat live in conditions that can only be described as torturous.
I’m not upset that people are upset. I’m upset that they are so upset. Cecil dies and this story starts extradition wheels turning, meanwhile a veritable state-sanctioned massacre of black people in this country is happening and by comparison, nothing is changing.
