Americans are generally apathetic to real news, like say the fact that there’s a bloody, four-year civil war raging in Syria or the fact that the monetary Politburo housed in the Eccles Building has plunged the world into the darkest imaginable recesses of fiat money insanity by printing $3.5 trillion over the course of just seven years, but some stories do manage to capture the public’s child-like imagination, and the tale of Cecil the lion is one of them.
For those who haven’t turned on a television in the past three weeks, all you really need to know is that a Minnesota dentist "accidentally" shot a protected lion while on safari in Zimbabwe.
It turns out that Cecil is (or "was") a tourist favorite and once word got out that Walter Palmer (the dentist) had killed him, the backlash came fast and furious as former patients papered Palmer’s office with threats and people across the country rallied around a petition to have him extradicted to Africa to face lion murder charges.
If this all seems surreal to you, you’re not alone but just to demonstrate how truly enthralled the American public has become with the Walter witch hunt, consider the following from NBC who reports [8] that the dentist’s South Florida vacation home (specifically the garage door) was tagged with the words "Lion Killer!" while marinated pigs’ feet were left in the driveway to roast in the hot Florida sun.
The South Florida vacation home of the dentist who killed Cecil the lion was the target of vandals, police said, after someone spray-painted "Lion Killer!" on the garage door last week.
Marco Island police are investigating who tagged the home of Walter James Palmer on Friday and also left a trail of pigs feet covered in a red substance on the driveway, NBC station WBBH reported. A jar of lion-shaped cookies was also left outside the home.
Vandals trash #CeciltheLion [9] killer Walter Palmer's vacation home with paint, pigs feet http://t.co/jujjnLhHjy [10] pic.twitter.com/7LPJMvp6Hr [11]
— AL.com (@aldotcom) August 5, 2015 [12]
The situation has reportedly become so bad that Palmer felt it necessary to hire a private security firm to protect his interests. Here’s NBC again [13]:
The American dentist who shot Cecil the lion has reportedly hired a private security firm staffed by armed ex-cops to protect his home.
Walter Palmer contacted the Global Investigative Group after his Florida vacation home was spray-painted with the words "lion killer," and what appeared to be marinated pig's feet were scattered in the driveway, The Associated Press and New York Post reported.
"We have armed investigators on the property, we're setting up covert cameras, we're documenting all license plates," Walter Zalisko, who heads the firm, told the News York Post. "Every investigator is a former police officer. They are all highly trained, armed with handguns and are all licensed by the state of Florida."
So now apparently, Cecil protesters will be shot just like Cecil if the step on Palmer’s vacation home lawn.
Because this story largely speaks for itself and in fact is quite illuminating when it comes to explaining why the American public is so easy to manipulate, we’ll simply close with what we said on Sunday [14] regarding the petition to have Palmer exported to Zimbabwe:
So in the end, we suppose the only question for Obama will be how to explain the fact that, as we reported on Thursday, the death of Cecil, as well as countless other lions, elephants, rhinos and other animals, is solely as a result of the Zimbabwe government's corruption. A corruption, which the US government knew all about, and despite the fact that Washington knew US hunters were killing not only elephants but lions, the government's only real concern was the "serious risks that Americans could be implicated in smuggling and poaching operations."
