An American dentist from Minnesota has allegedly killed an iconic Zimbabwean lion named Cecil with a bow and arrow in a trophy hunt. The Internet is outraged, perhaps rightly so. It is telling, however, that the deaths of thousands of ordinary Zimbabweans, and the starvation and displacement of millions, have failed to rouse anything like the same level of anger.
President Barack Obama had the decency to exclude Zimbabwean dictator, Robert Mugabe, from the African Union summit in Ethiopia. But he, too, has largely been silent on Zimbabwe.
Could there be any better illustration that black lives do not matter to our liberal media and political elites?
Earlier this week, Obama was in Ethiopia, where he referred to its “democratically elected government.” In reality, Ethiopia’s elections have been a total fraud. “The prime minister of Ethiopia was just elected with 100 percent of the vote,” said noted Obama critic…Susan Rice, at a briefing last week. Obama piled on, joking about running for a third term, even as Mugabe called the two-term limit a “rope around the neck” of African leaders.
Zimbabwe has been on the slide for decades. The rot set in during the 1980s, when Mugabe’s forces killed tens of thousands from the Ndebele minority as he consolidated his control over the government.
In the late 1990s, as the country’s socialist economy slid into a deep fiscal crisis, Mugabe targeted gays and trade unions, and called a constitutional referendum to expand his powers. When he lost, he launched a racist terror campaign against white farmers–destroying the country’s economy–and accelerated his persecution of the opposition.
The world yawned, mostly–even though animals as precious as Cecil were poached from Zimbabwe’s national parks, not for trophy hunting but for food. George W. Bush declared Zimbabwe an “outpost of tyranny,” but the left took little interest–because, well, Bush.
Obama came to office determined to ignore Bush’s democracy agenda. Amidst the hysteria over policing in the U.S. which Obama has joined the left in stoking, no one bothered with the police state in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, or elsewhere.
So spare the angst over Cecil, liberals. Black lives don’t matter to you.