…why the Trump voter hasn’t seen the light yet.

Somewhere, the rhino’s horn got the reputation to cure impotence (or is it some other male sexual failure like premature ejaculation or erectile dysfunction?) I personally don’t know for a fact whether it does or not, although I suspect it has no effect whatsoever on male sexual performance or health. After all, the rhino’s horn is made up of keratin, (not bone–sorry, I couldn’t resist), the same protein in hair or fingernails. It doesn’t have any medicinal or magic properties that I know of.

But regardless of that, it has the reputation of being able to correct a failure to perform sexually, and it consequently is in enormous demand, particularly in Asia, where all sorts of animal products are rumored to have wondrous therapeutic properties. The demand for powdered rhino horn is immense, and the price is astronomical. The result is that animal has been hunted nearly to extinction in the wild, and even zoo specimens need to be protected by armed guards.

How can this be? If the horn does indeed work as advertised, it could be easily studied, and some form of substitute could be synthesized in the laboratory. The financial incentive is certainly there! If the supposed benefit is simply a superstition, a myth, then by now we should have figured it out and people will have stopped spending enormous sums for it. I don’t know how much rhino horn sells for, but I understand it costs more per ounce than gold. Besides, how does the customer KNOW what he’s getting actually IS rhino horn? Is there a chemical test, like for cocaine?

Supposedly, the horn dust user is most often Chinese, or Arab, or a member of some allegedly superstitious and barbaric race, but surely this is just our own racism rearing its ugly head. After all, anybody that can afford this stuff must be a businessman or professional, or a rich merchant, politician or underworld boss — someone with access to education and information. And I presume the patients would have already exhausted all the traditional medical alternatives. Besides, its not like Europeans and Americans aren’t often conned by cosmetics, diet supplements, and all sorts of other shortcuts to make them more appealing to the opposite sex, or more of a superstar in the sack.

But in the meantime, rare and irreplaceable life forms are being sacrificed on the altar of human vanity, and low-life scum-bags profit by killing and selling, always selling, selling, selling. And the mark must figure out for himself soon enough that his sexual performance isn’t affected in the least by the grey powder he’s sprinkling in his wine. So why does the market persist? Why do people keep buying the horn?

Simple, because the guy who learns the soft way that the horn doesn’t do the job is too damned embarrassed to admit it didn’t work, and that he’s been conned out of a mountain of cash to boot. He shows up with a big grin on his face the next day but he’s just as horny and frustrated as he was the night before and his woman is still unsatisfied–or laughing to herself. Like every victim of fraud, he’s more ashamed to admit he fell for it than he’s angry about being taken. Did you ever wonder why Bernie Madoff’s sentence was so severe? If he’d been stealing from the poor he’d
be out of prison by now.