It is an amazing feeling to wake up in the morning and realize that the world has become an immeasurably better place, seemingly overnight.
That is what I experienced this AM when I awoke to the news coming out of Africa about Cecil the Lion. Why is the world a better place because of that, you ask?
Well, obviously, if the most significant and important current events in Africa involve Cecil, then it would seem the decades of troubles that have plagued Africa have been happily resolved!
The rise of Islamic Fascism has been pushed back and defeated, religious and ethnic cleansings have ceased and their perpetrators brought to justice, the endless supply of warlords, tyrants and dictators have been overthrown and freedom now reigns supreme. Child soldiers have retired and beaten their bloodied machetes into shovels and AK-47s into fence posts. The ever present issues of clean water and hygiene have been resolved, epidemics such as AIDs and Ebola have been cured and eradicated. They have even given up playing soccer and adapted a real, more exciting sport.
Surely all of these troubling humanitarian crises have been dealt with before we shifted the spotlight of international outrage to the hunters of Cecil the Lion?
If you can imagine my early morning elation on what I assumed was the curing of an entire continent’s troubles, you can empathize with the complete depression I have sunk into after learning that I was wrong and none of the actual plights affecting the unfortunate humans in Africa have been resolved, yet we have instead focused our first-world compassion on the troubles of a four legged beast.
You know who you are,. You still have the rainbow colored Facebook profile picture, mainly because you haven’t found a new cause appropriately hip enough to go through the trouble of changing your picture. Perhaps you can find a filter that gives you a lion’s mane or even just a picture of Simba will suffice now that a new crisis of first-world guilt is upon us.
Your behavior is sickening, and like the brainless herd of gazelles that Cecil so enjoyed disemboweling you have trampled all over each other to express your heartfelt feelings of empathy for the sufferings of others…and by others I mean a freaking wild animal in the midst of the most extreme human suffering that exists in our current world.
With your emphatic baring of your social media conscience, you have proven to the world how extremely privileged your life is behind your Twitter account. Only someone who experiences the world through hashtags and trending stories can ignore the irony of the flood of sympathy for a dead animal as millions of people remain in actual slavery in Africa.
Yet even in your depressing form of life you are not unique. Previous first-world powers like the ancient Romans actually put people like you to use as hired mourners at funerals to make the recently deceased seem more important and missed. If you lived back then you might have actually been paid for your embarrassing display of guilt and faux sympathy. Of course back then you would have actually had to gone outside to satisfy your need for collective grief and outrage. Thank god (or whatever spirit animal you claim to worship) that now nowadays you can join in such pointless exhibits of your juvenile intellectual ability from your air conditioned homes while you eat the flesh of boring animals that taste good.
If you actually care about animals more than people, I would suggest for the betterment of all involved that you present yourself as a meal to the nearest available lion or other carnivorous animal. They will enjoy it, as will I.
If you are one of the people who don’t actually care about anything other than the currently trending topic and will forget about Cecil by returning to such uncomplicated matters such as what color dresses are or what generic word Kanye will apply to his next offspring…I hope you die.
Precisely, I would like you to spill your Starbuck’s cappuccino with the extra five shots of expresso (heaven knows you need all your available energy to watch Netflix) all over your Macbook and be electrocuted…in front of someone with a phone so your death can be hash tagged and made available for the world to watch as you die. I’m sure even the AIDs riddled child soldier in Africa will get a laugh out of you experiencing the full circle of life.
That last bit is from Mufasa, the only Lion who’s death it is acceptable to cry over.
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