Yes, Donald Trump several times a day subverts all that is decent in human beings.
But this morning, as I once again took in the usual catalog of horrific news - more onRoy Moore, more on a Tax Bill which would raise almost everyone's taxes (except billionaires and corporations), take health insurance from 13 million Americans and increase the national debt by $1.5 trillion, more on the nuclear brinksmanship between North Korea and the Orange Thing in the White House, only one new headline made me burst into tears:
Trump Administration to Lift Ban on 'Trophy' Elephant Imports.
Now if you know me at all, you would know I am crazy about elephants* who are, as you surely should know, intelligent, loving, majestic and altogether remarkable creatures.
They are also creatures in distress as poachers, often in the hire of ISIS and other terrorist groups, slaughter them for their valued ivory tusks. Yes, you heard right, the killing of elephants has been linked to terrorism.
GPS gadgets have been placed in artificial tusks, and those outfitted tusks placed in trucks with real tusks of murdered elephants. Those trucks have then been tracked to ISIS strongholds. Then they have been tracked across the Indian Ocean to China. Presumably money exchanged hands in the ISIS camp before the expensive cargo left for places east.
We shouldn't be surprised. Evil seems to gravitate toward and support Evil.
How did Stone find Trump? How did Trump find Bannon? Well, yes, that is another story, though the point is the same.
At any rate, elephants are now an endangered species because true evil is now aligning against them.
In my opinion, loving elephants is a litmus test for what it means to be human.
The census that Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen and his team at Vulcan maintains says, "In 7 years, 30% of Africa's elephants have disappeared." They further say, "At the current rate of decline half the continent's remaining pachyderms will be gone in just nine years."
More evil has come forward too.
Like many of you, I remember gagging the first time I saw these photos, the despicable Trump boys with their horrific trophies.
How, I thought, is it possible that evil has aligned itself with more evil -the miniature Trump look-alikes, even more stupid and vapid than the original, have fused with our worse memories of a barbaric past.
The Trump Twinkies pose as conquering murderers, just as their proverbial ancestors had done when they slaughtered the buffalo which once were abundant in the American west.
American men once almost annihilated the indigenous animals (as well as indigenous peoples of North America) and now they (who had once stolen Africa's indigenous people) were still claiming the right to Africa's animals too.
Yet, there is an ironic, even comic , reality to their actions too. These are no fierce real hunters. These are boys, not men, themselves living proof that human beings are not evolving to something higher but rather degenerating into something base.
Then, today, their Pater, The Trump himself, without explanation, with no care for its effect on terrorism, nor its consequences for the biodiversity of the earth, has stepped forward to allow his boys and their ilk to bring home the proof of their detestable butchery.
Trump who wants to have our parks filled with statues of traitors who caused the carnage of the Civil War wants American homes filled with the carnage American hunters cause in Africa.
Maybe I shouldn't be so glum. Yes, Trump and his boys are now making decisions about the elephants and other animals, but soon 2018 will come, and maybe sooner Mueller will come.
Hillary and the Clinton Foundation will not forget the elephants.
Nor will these people who wrote on Twitter today about the elephants.
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November 16, 2017
Post Script.
Speaking of the subject of evolution, I am a big fan of this cartoon. To me it accurately describes what has happened to the GOP.
We saw more proof of this today.
* In my life outside of Voices4Hillary aka Voices4America, I am producing a play with the amazing Handspring Puppet Company of South Africa, the creators of War Horse. It is about a man who falls in love with a herd of wild elephants.
