For Every Action...

Remember Cecil the Lion?

Yeah, he was the really, really old lion that hung around the game preserves of Botswana.  That's in Africa.  The Dark Continent, you know.  Perhaps they need some electricity...

I hear wind and solar work well.

Anyway, Cecil really screwed the pooch one day.  He wandered off his uber-safe game preserve and away from his pride of lionesses-ses, and into the sights of one Cinnncinncinciinnatti dentist who was looking for a yuuuuge prize to hang on his wall!  Our dentist friend was doing nothing wrong, except attempting to shoot a lion, which he had had waited his whole life to do, and for which he'd saved up his money to fund, for which he paid upwards of $50,000, and for which he had a permit to shoot, and in a place where lions hang out.

What could possibly go wrong?

Except he had failed to check the latest listing of "Social No-No's" back home.  Somewhere along the line it became socially unacceptable to go hunting, and most particularly the hunting of old lions, especially those 8,000 miles away.    So at the top of this list must have been "Thou must not shoot lions!"  So when he pulled the trigger and Cecil bit the dust, our dentist friend had instantly become persona non grata to the entire world! 

His wife divorced him.  The state of Ohio revoked his medical license.  He lost his lease and his business.  His hygienist stopped hygienicizing.  He went bankrupt.  All because somebody, or several somebodies, decided that shooting a lion should absolutely result in him being "cancelled."  For he surely was.  As a matter of fact, have you heard of him since?  Anything?  At all?

My point.

Oh yeah, back to the title of this particular posting.  Because of the backlash due to Cecil's killing, and because the vast majority of Big Game hunters come from America, Botswana could not give a Lion License away because no one wanted to be cancelled like our dentist friend.  And in the two years following this sad event, lions, which had been professionally overseen by state-appointed Preserve Franchises with the excess animals culled via proper herd and pride management, were permitted to grow out of control.  To the extent that more than 200 local villagers became the Evening Buffet for Cecil's relatives until this all died down (you'll forgive the expression) and proper lion hunting resumed.

And the sharing of license fees from Big Game hunting would once again not only be collected, but shared with the dozens of local tribes.  In most cases their only source of income.    

So some elitist socialite in Ohio got "triggered" because Cecil got shot, and 200 poor African villagers got eaten because lions were no longer being "triggered."  

Remember the title of this blog posting?  "For every action?"  Yeah, well, I think we can wrap a ribbon around this one with, "..there is an equal and opposite reaction."