Trophies
Two of Trump’s sons have paid big bucks to slaughter charismatic megafauna in Africa.
Animal rights activists are revolted by a series of trophy photos that have emerged showing Eric and Donald Trump Jr. posing with a dead elephant, kudu, civet cat and waterbuck while on a big game safari in Zimbabwe last year. In one photo, Donald Jr. proudly holds a dead elephant tail in one hand and a knife in the other.
“Look at me! I made this animal dead because I have a big gun! Animals are losers, they don’t have guns.”
The big game safari was organized through a company called Hunting Legends. The Daily Mail reports that there are trophy fees for the deer-like animal they shot, called the Kudu. The Trumps reportedly paid at least $2,795.00 and another $1,997.00 for the Waterbuck they were pictured with, but Don Jr. says on Twitter, “the money from hunting fees preserves animals and habitat.”
Of course they could always just donate the money to animal habitat preservation and skip the part where they kill the animals.
Or, even, they could just skip the part where they kill an elephant.
Updating to add:
And the leopard. The bastards also killed a leopard.
The transparently phoney machismo is particularly repellent, who do these ‘hunters’ think that they’re fooling.
Frankly, the lack of creativity is astounding. These guys have had the world handed to them on a silver platter, could spend and do whatever they wanted, and this is the best way they can come up with to spend their time? To go outside and kill things, like some (ugh) poor person who doesn’t have a mansion and a chef? Daddy must be disappointed.
‘These guys have had the world handed to them on a silver platter, could spend and do whatever they wanted, and this is the best way they can come up with to spend their time?’
You know, I’ve always wondered about that. The thing I envy most about the 1% is that they don’t have to spend their finite time budget the way the rest of us do. We work, often long hours at jobs we hate; we commute, we spend time cooking, cleaning, and doing boring daily errands; I know in my case on top of the time I spend on these things I also use up a hefty chunk of evening and weekend time on mindless entertainment (I feel like it’s ‘wasting time’, but I’ve come to realise I need the time to recover from the other things I’m forced to do). We take care of family members and other people. We dedicate time to collective action to improve our lives and other people’s lives. All of this generally doesn’t leave a lot of time for pure creativity, or for the work it takes to develop a skill.
But the 1% either don’t do these things, or don’t have to if they don’t choose to–so why aren’t the ranks of the greatest writers, painters, poets, composers, dancers, scholars, scientists, sportspeople, musicians, etc. etc. filled with the super-rich? They’re the ones who have pretty much all of their time to devote to the arts, humanities and sciences, without the time constraints of earning a living and taking care of ourselves and others. The only answer I’ve ever heard is that their culture doesn’t value these things, so they don’t do them. Are there other explanations?
guest @ 4
‘…so they don’t do them’
Interesting comment. Historically, members of the upper classes provided most of our scientists and intellectuals since only they were spared the need to earn a living. However, I’d bet that most of the 1% in the past were just as useless, unproductive and parasitic as their contemporary counterparts. There’s no reason to assume that most of the rich are are anymore intellectually gifted than the average pleb, so we really shouldn’t expect anymore from them than a desire to own larger houses, larger boats and the ability to shoot larger animals.
It’s not just idle richness, is it? It’s an urge to destroy beautiful things. As guest and RJW said, these people had the opportunity to make something, to leave the world better than they found it. But they decided to make the world worse instead. No skill was plied. They didn’t track those animals themselves. They didn’t fight them on their own terms. They pulled a fucking trigger than laughed about it on camera. They made the world objectively worse because they couldn’t think of anything better to do.
Everyone here, I expect, can think of hundreds of better things to do right off the top of their heads. I’m willing to bet that many people here do better things all the time, every day, despite not being as rich as creosote.
I’m fairly well known for hating a wide variety of people, but people who kill things for fun hulk me all the way out.