According to some recent Corporate Media headlines, we here the Prozac Nation are once again experiencing one of our regular paroxysms of collective outrage. This time, the focus of Ameroboob anger is a directed at an adventurous 12 year-old girl named Aryanna Gourdin of Utah. It seems that young Miss Aryanna enjoys travelling on safaris with her father, and has scored a rather impressive trophy record, bringing down big game with her trusty pink bow-and-arrows. She's posted photos on Facebook with some her successes---really quite some remarkable kills---including a giraffe, impala, a wildebeest, and zebra.
Of course, these photos have caused a hysterical uproar among a population which sees nothing wrong with the US selling cluster-bombs to Wahhabis who drop them on Yemeni schoolchildren. But in our Postmodern dystopia, schoolchildren hunting big game creates almost as much social horror as schoolchildren smoking cigarettes or showing interest in the opposite sex. A heavy dose of Ritalin is the accepted cure for these types of non-Politically Correct behaviors.
So too, is online harassment and threats, which Miss Aryanna has been receiving in spades. This isn't the first time angry cyber lynch-mobs have done this kind of thing. In 2014, a lovely Belgian woman named Axelle Despiegelaere was forced out of a modeling contract after it was learned that she went on a safari. Last year, an American man suffered considerable harassment after killing a lion; and more recently a heroic Cincinnati police officer was targeted by those outraged that he saved a boy's life by shooting a gorilla.
It's fairly obvious to any rational mind that the crackpots attacking people like these---especially with the level of hatred and vitriol they exhibit---are mentally unbalanced themselves. The massive proliferation of mind-altering narcotics in the United States doubtless contributes to their behavior. But there are probably other psychological factors involved as well.
21st Century American culture has largely become dehumanized. We see this both in the cavalier attitudes towards the destruction of human life and the deconstruction of gender roles. We have in many ways, lost our collective soul---in other words, lost that which separates humanity from the beasts of the field. Naturally, many of the most dehumanized identify with the superior physical powers of the Animal Kingdom. It shatters their illusions when a mere human shows himself (or herself in this case) superior to the Forces of Nature. Thus they resent a svelte Belgian model shooting a gazelle---a gazelle which any local leopard would have gladly killed and eaten in a much less humane way.
Wildlife Conservation is of course important, but hunting laws have been in effect in the US since 1907, which regulate the indiscriminate killing of wildlife. Instead of attacking 12 year-old girls online, however, these outraged activists would be much more constructively engaged if they would expend their efforts lobbying for greater infrastructure protection. The neglected condition of our National Forests and public waterways are causing considerably more destruction to our ecosystem than hunting, fishing, or trapping by licensed sportsmen.
The Internet Crackpots, however, will unlikely be influenced by rational arguments. These types of trolls get adrenaline rushes from feeling powerful, which in our passive-aggressive social milieu is always carried out in a dastardly and cowardly way. It takes courage to face a wild animal with a bow and arrow; it takes none to assume an arrogant tone to a 12 year-old. Which is another reason why they hate Aryanna; she has courage and her detractors do not.
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