Cecil-Lion Syndrome is the phenomenon of giving lip-service to a cause or movement, but not actually giving physical service or monetary donations to that cause, and is a hallmark of the American Social Justice movement.
It is a form of passive "caring", in contrast to active love, where the goal is not to actually selflessly help or assist anyone, but rather to selfishly feel warm and fuzzy and morally superior. It is talking without acting.
It is characterized by sharing and retweeting BLM media, but never donating a cent of money to help black communities.
It is evident in Obama getting a Nobel Peace Prize for saying he would do things, rather than actually doing anything. This is an utter mockery of other recipients of the award, such as Malala, who literally took a bullet for peace. It is manifest in people complaining about homeless people versus the number of churches, when they themselves haven't given a penny to homeless individuals, and the churches have given millions of dollars.
It is characterized by SJWs posting about how they stand with Standing Rock, yet they didn't go and participate in protests, or donate to organizations lobbying against the DAPL. Even if they did, where was their outrage when the Wells Fargo in Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community targetted members of the tribe for a scam in October 2016? Where was their outrage when it was revealed in January of this year that tribal leaders of the Paskenta Nomlaki Reservation embezzled millions of dollars from their tribe over the past 15 years? Or a former Navajo leader later this year? Or the Chippewa Cree tribal leaders in 2013?
If they care so much about Native water, where were they during the 2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill, which spilled mercury into the San Juan river, causing $335 million worth do damage to Navajo crops, farms, and cattle herds?
The answer is simple: they only care about Native Americans when it is a trend. Enough to passively post something on social media, but not enough to take actual action against these injustices.
Cecil-Lion Syndrome is evident in Colin Kaepernick, who took a knee to "protest oppression", but hasn't done a damn thing to help anyone. Versus JJ Watts, who raised $37 million dollars in hurricane relief funds. And yet Kaepernick was named GQ's "Citizen of the Year".
It is also characterized by politicians who complain about problems, but never propose solutions. They don't need to have a solution: they just need to feel warm and fuzzy inside for being concerned about the problem.
A classic example of this is Bernie Sanders, who has countless times complained about incarceration rates, and made promises (but no plan) to reduce these rates if elected president; in comparison to Rand Paul, who has also mentioned this, but has proposed the solution of abolishing mandatory minimums. We also saw it with Michelle Obama's #bringbackourgirls campaign.
Why? In the United States today, we celebrate the warm fuzzies, rather than those who actually do anything. The answer is because these people don't actually care; or at least not enough to do anything. Their caring doesn't extend past social media rants, and repeating verbatim what their social justice heroes have told them to scream.
"Cecil-Lion Syndrome" derives from the irony regarding public outcry on July 1, 2015 over the killing of the Lion "Cecil" in Zimbabwe, although the same day a South Carolinian black church was set on fire, ISIS-linked groups killed dozens at Sinai, the UN declared Yemen a humanitarian crisis estimating 25 million were starving, and an undercover video came out revealing that Planned Parenthood was selling dead fetuses on the black market.
We saw again it in the massive outrage over the killing of Harambe the Gorilla.
Whilst dentist Walter Palmer was receiving hate mail and death threats for killing a lion, hardly anyone on social media showed any outrage for any of the actual atrocities towards humans that day. And why this inconsistency? Because it is easier to passively care about lions and gorillas than to actively care about those around us.
Blogger Matt Walsh further explains this phenomenon:
...Progressives choose to care about lions because lions are an abstraction. They care about the idea of lions.
Real lions are all the way in Africa, or else contained in zoos. You can go and see them, or watch them on TV, or read about them, but crucially, lions will never ask anything from us. Our affection for them presents no challenges. We don’t have to accommodate them. I can say I love lions, but this love will never require me to do anything. Lions will never inconvenience me. They’ll never get in my way. I can defend the lives of lions by angrily Tweeting about hunters, and then I can go on my way, live however I want, and never be asked to change my lifestyle for their sake.
People, on the other hand, are real. They are here. They impose themselves on our lives. They burden us. They surround us. To care about people is hard. It requires us to live, act, think, and speak differently. We have to accommodate people. We have to tolerate people. We have to do things for people, especially the most vulnerable and helpless people. It’s no coincidence that progressivism advocates abortion to deal with children, and euthanasia to handle the old and the infirm. If it is going to pretend to love human beings at all, it must first get rid of the most burdensome types.
It can be hard to love people. And if you say you love people, life is going to constantly demand that you prove it. If you say you love people, you certainly can’t kill your own child, and you can’t support the killing of children, and even if you don’t have kids, you have to be patient and kind with other people’s kids, and other people generally. This is very different from loving lions. You can love lions passively, in the abstract; people must be loved actively, in reality.
If ever some deranged terrorist transported thousand of lions into our neighborhoods, forcing us to actually love lions in some real and present sense, I can guarantee the progressive affection for the species would vanish rapidly.
This is the progressive modus operandi. Progressivism loves everything that can be loved lazily or indulgently, and nothing that must be loved sacrificially and earnestly. It loves nothing that requires any action on its part.
Put more simply, it loves nothing.
But it will keep pretending anyway.
Undoubtedly SJWs and progressives who read this will be offended. They will say "how dare you say I don't care, I do care.". To which I would respond "Prove it."
If you care so much, if you truly are morally superior, then actually do something. Volunteer, donate your time, money or resources. Act, or shut up.
Real lions are all the way in Africa, or else contained in zoos. You can go and see them, or watch them on TV, or read about them, but crucially, lions will never ask anything from us. Our affection for them presents no challenges. We don’t have to accommodate them. I can say I love lions, but this love will never require me to do anything. Lions will never inconvenience me. They’ll never get in my way. I can defend the lives of lions by angrily Tweeting about hunters, and then I can go on my way, live however I want, and never be asked to change my lifestyle for their sake.
People, on the other hand, are real. They are here. They impose themselves on our lives. They burden us. They surround us. To care about people is hard. It requires us to live, act, think, and speak differently. We have to accommodate people. We have to tolerate people. We have to do things for people, especially the most vulnerable and helpless people. It’s no coincidence that progressivism advocates abortion to deal with children, and euthanasia to handle the old and the infirm. If it is going to pretend to love human beings at all, it must first get rid of the most burdensome types.
It can be hard to love people. And if you say you love people, life is going to constantly demand that you prove it. If you say you love people, you certainly can’t kill your own child, and you can’t support the killing of children, and even if you don’t have kids, you have to be patient and kind with other people’s kids, and other people generally. This is very different from loving lions. You can love lions passively, in the abstract; people must be loved actively, in reality.
If ever some deranged terrorist transported thousand of lions into our neighborhoods, forcing us to actually love lions in some real and present sense, I can guarantee the progressive affection for the species would vanish rapidly.
This is the progressive modus operandi. Progressivism loves everything that can be loved lazily or indulgently, and nothing that must be loved sacrificially and earnestly. It loves nothing that requires any action on its part.
Put more simply, it loves nothing.
But it will keep pretending anyway.
Undoubtedly SJWs and progressives who read this will be offended. They will say "how dare you say I don't care, I do care.". To which I would respond "Prove it."
If you care so much, if you truly are morally superior, then actually do something. Volunteer, donate your time, money or resources. Act, or shut up.
Sources:
Matt Walsh, "Sometimes It’s Just Easier To Care About Dead Lions Than Dead People", The Blaze
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