He used a bow and two arrows to put down a lion named Cecil.  In Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe, Dr. Walter Palmer, a dentist and part-time he-man, killed a thirteen year old lion lured to its cruel fate by two trackers for the purpose of letting a "sportsman" kill a big cat for a fee of $50,000.  Pictures of Palmer posing with his four-legged victims have been shown on American cable news.  A large horned beast, a huge spotted cat held upright and limp by the victorious dentist.  His popularity, if polled, would probably hang somewhere below that of ISIS.
     He's in hiding.  The Zimbabwean government wants to extradite him for prosecution there.  Arguments against doing so on cable news include that African nation's atrocious human rights record and its terrible prisons.  The United States, supposedly, has no bad prison conditions.  In any case, Palmer hasn't been accused, yet, of violating any laws.  Hunting big game is legal in Zimbabwe, bringing in millions of dollars each year in tourist/hunter cash.  Palmer claims he didn't know that Cecil was a lion from a protected wildlife preserve until after he killed him and saw the tracking device around the dead animal's neck.  According to one of the trackers working for him, Palmer "panicked," and put the tracking device in a nearby tree.  The tracker faces a possible fifteen years in prison for poaching.  The Zimbabwean authorities, presumably, would like to get Palmer for poaching.  He could be a prison dentist.
     If Palmer comes out of hiding, will the U.S. government give him to the Zimbabwean justice system?  Will Dr. Palmer become an American to fight for?  Is a lion's life worth less than that of a callous son of a bitch operating along the murky edge of a legal system which allows wealthy white people to "hunt" big land animals, not for food, but for the fun of it?
     Palmer's killing of Cecil, legal or not, was the act of a bungling sadist.  His first arrow wounded the lion.  Night fell and they had to take a break from tracking him.  Forty hours after the first arrow entered the lion's body, Palmer killed him with the second arrow, saw and "hid" the tracking device, skinned and cut off the animal's head, posing for a picture that shows the fine teeth we expect in the skull of a dentist.
     Did Palmer break Zimbabwean law?  I point out the evidence that he believed he broke the law--his awkward attempt at hiding the lion's tracking device shows a man worried he's done something that may come back to bite him in the butt.
     Zimbabwe's leader, Robert Mugabe, ninety-one years old, has been president of that country since 1987, and was prime minister from 1980.  He obviously doesn't like political challengers.  Zimbabwe, to the United States, is a so-called pariah nation.  Mugabe's human rights record includes institutionalized torture, suppression of free speech, and other typical fear-based behaviors associated with iron rule supported by the consent of First World powers.  Iran has cultivated good relations with Zimbabwe, which has uranium and diamonds.  Barack Obama looks down on Mugabe, while Mugabe says Obama's nothing special.  Zimbabwean military equipment comes more from the People's Republic of China and Russia than from Western Europe and the U.S.
     On June 6, 2012, according to The Guardian, the forward-most motorcycle in Mugabe's motorcade struck and killed a homeless man, injuring the motorcyclist as he flew off his bike.  Mugabe, "riding in a one million dollar Mercedes Benz limousine, 'zoomed past the accident scene moments later, probably unaware of the serious crash,'" adds Zimbabwe's Daily News.
     An eyewitness said, "The bike ripped through the man's legs while the bike rider was thrown off.  The scene was so ghastly and bloody that one would not take a second glance."
     Or, in Mugabe's case, a first glance.
     "Mugabe's motorcade," the article goes on, "usually comprises police escort bikes, state security vehicles, police vehicles, his Zim 1 limousine and Land Cruiser trucks full of heavily armed soldiers...He also travels with an ambulance among other vehicles.  His motorcade is regarded as one of Africa's longest."
     In 2005, the motorcade ran over and killed another homeless man.
     It's an offence in Zimbabwean road traffic regulations to "make any gesture or statement within the view or hearing of the state motorcade with the intention of insulting any person traveling with an escort or any member of the escort."
     Do not say "Fuck you" to the motorcade.
     Callousness towards the continuation of innocent life, a lion or a vagabond, is not a sociopathic condition demonstrated just in the Third World.  Marco Rubio griped in a tweet: "Look at all this outrage over a dead lion, but where is all the outrage over the planned parenthood dead babies."
     A Planned Parenthood employee was secretly videoed talking about abortion doctors preserving tissue for research, a latest smoking gun argument used by those who employ the term genocide when describing the killing of prenatal human life.  Rubio wants to take away funding for Planned Parenthood.  He also wants to close the new Cuban embassy in Washington.  He's a curiously narrow-minded young man.
     Rubio's views on the killing of a lion suggest he doesn't give a shit about animals and nature.  What kind of president, then, would he be?
     Mugabe's twenty-eight years of presidency have made him the kind of person who doesn't realize his security epic in motion, the motorcade, sometimes runs people down.
     What made the dentist, Walter Palmer, into a man who gets his thrills killing animals from a safe distance?  Indifference?  Stupidity?  Heartlessness?  I don't know, except that everything I've brought up here shows words coming from some people's mouths don't match the severity of their actions, or in Rubio's case, his words suggest he's incapable of feeling compassion for a lion who spent forty hours in agony.
     Dr. Palmer: If you don't already know you're a piece of shit, you never will, so you've got nothing to learn, except how to aim better.

                                                                            Vic Neptune