The Fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper…the PC Version
February 17, 2010 by Dan Mitchell
TRADITIONAL VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
——————————————————————————
OBAMA-REID-PELOSI VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.” Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.
President Obama condemns the ant and blames capitalism for the grasshopper’s plight.
Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood.
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY: If you choose to become a parasite, don’t kill your victim.
Yep, I am a Dan Mitchell fan.
GA
Gus, a million applauses. Let go Old Testament here(I am not traditionally religious but a New Ager). If one is abled intellectually, psychologically, & physically, get off your assets & work. If one chooses not to work, one can starve & die for all I care. There are far too many parasites who want to live the good life of others instead of exerting effort to work in order to have a good life.
The late Dr. Hawkins indicated that the WORST thing one can do for a poor person is to give them help & aid for such make poor people more dependent & lazy. The only way to help poor people is to teach them to do for themselves. People who receive aid lose incentive to do for themselves. Take for instance, welfare. Welfare was meant to be a temporary respite to eventually help people to be self-sufficient but oh no, welfare has become a GENERATIONAL, even MULTI-GENERATIONAL thing among some people. Gus, how do you like your steak & martini? I love my steaks rare to medium rare but skip the martini- I will have bottled water with a twist of lemon. Gus, this is a GREAT TOPIC as usual!!!
There are far too many people who want THAT GOOD LIFE but they REFUSE to work to earn it. They want the good life through other more affluent relatives, the gub'mint, or other outside forces. What happened to the concepts of pride, responsibility, & independence. My late father taught me that independence is the GREATEST thing of all. He despised freeloaders, parasites, & others who refused to help themselves. You Gus inspired me to do a thread...…..
My martinis are dry and my steaks are medium-rare. Thanks for the comment.
GA
Well, what a tale... I have heard that ants are the most numerous insects in the world. So, can we expect that in the end, the ant's will come up with some way of working around the grasshoppers? Maybe, providing them good mental health care. Oh, and make it free.
Ants love grasshoppers, so much so, they eat them with relish. Haven't you ever witnessed a grasshopper which has been overcome by ants?
"Squirming like a worm in an ant bed," is a common saying down here, and it's the same with a hoppergrass. And no, this isn't misspelled.
Yes... I have witnessed ant's devouring grasshopper. Then, if I am understanding your analogy you believe the ant's, in the end, will win out over the grasshoppers?
No, simply pointing out the old fable isn't apt. The grasshopper, and many of the ants, won't live long no matter how hard they toil. The ants are "social" insects. So does this mean a socialist society is better than a solitary one? Nope.
Perhaps let's look at the word social as a noun. Do the ant's toil so grasshoppers can enjoy the same level of socializing as their hard work has provided them? Do ant's feel they need to pay for a socialist society, provide for grasshoppers? Not sure this ant does... LOL
I agree socialist society is not better than a solitary one.
Wrong again. Although I didn't write this, I do fancy myself to have a fair hand when it comes to fiction writing. I will have to dig up some of my old username stories to offer.
GA
I've never noticed an ant which toiled alone, Gus. There are normally thousands of ants working together, with the Queen ant as the sole leader.
Grasshoppers, as their nature dictates, are creatures of a solitary life. Aesop often got it wrong.
Ahhh, what's wrong little kitty? Little kitty looks so sad...….(Elmer Fudd voice).
That is a look I am familiar with. Have you been talking to my wife?
GA
I like this response much better than the one I was going to give. Lol
It must be a 'woman-thing'. I don't think guys can do that look.
The best we can come up with is a dry 'Really?'
GA
As with so many things political this is too simplistic. It creates division because of the simplicity. A very old tale of the death of a grasshopper.
Sounds to me like the ant wrote the story in an attempt to assuage his guilt at the misfortunes of the grasshopper. Or, worse, to cover up some illegal activity that caused his success and created a toxic environment that prohibited the grasshopper the ability to take advantage of the same opportunities.
As a beetle, although I too toil, I must accept that the ant probably is also responsible for my troubles and we need to rewrite the history as told by the ant with a kinder, gentler understanding of what we would like to believe motivated that grasshopper.
A full blown investigation is warranted.
Oh, and thanks to all the grasshoppers who banded together to make this investigation possible. As a dung beetle, my fortunes are growing.
With all of the fortune you spend on these forums, I'd think you'd be running low!
?? My first post in 4 or 5 days. That didn't cost much. Considering the bs being spread around here I actually gathered more than I spread.
So, all in all, I'm ahead. As a dung beetle, that is. I would think, for all your posts you'd be really hungry by now.
Indeed not, it doesn't take much energy to sweep your fortune into the flower beds. Roses love fertilizer....
No grasshopper, you are too small to sweep a ball of bs away alone.
Anyway, the flower bushes died long ago from too much fresh bs being thrown about indiscriminately.
Yours seems too weak to affect anything much at all, LTL. Must be Trump BS you're slinging.
I never said I thought I could affect anything. Any poster on this site who thinks they have any influence is quite delusional.
However, I'm not really a dung beetle. I don't touch poop. Are you saying that's what you are flinging and your pile is more potent than mine?
I have no doubt.
I don't have a pile, I'm simply cleaning up after you. Gosh, you coulda fooled me!
You appear to be easily fooled so,again, not surprised.
A second thought? Two in a row.
Well done Randy.
You should try it sometime, LTL? Unless you're perfect like Trump, that is. Are you a stable genius like Donnie? ooooooooh, I think you are!
Darn. Randy. You back to a single thought? Your escape from the monotony didn't last long.
I doubt if Trump is a genius. So, since I don't agree with your premise I'm not certain how to answer the question.
Are you a liar like Pelosi?
I doubt if anyone else does either, so your answer is clearly no. Are you as honest as Donnie? Do you think Pelosi lies with the frequency of Donnie?
No contest on that one...
Can't answer the question Randy? I guess that means your answer is yes?
"Since I don't agree with your premise, I'm not certain how to answer the question."
It's a quote from you, LTL. Does it mean my question to you was "Over your head?"
The ant represents work ethic while the grasshopper didn't. The ant worked, strategized, & economized for the future while the grasshopper practice immediate gratification. The ant had while the grasshopper didn't, well serves the grasshopper right. The moral is that those who work smart, strategize, & save will succeed & prosper while those who squander their time will be in dire straits. Those who work-get while those who don't-well starve, who gives a crap.
I don't feel sorry for the indolent. The indolent deserves what they get. Nothing is free in this world. If one wants something, h/she must work & earn it. If h/she doesn't work nor earn it, h/she should do without. Yes, funky grown abled people should work & earn their way & they should suffer if they refuse to work. There is no sympathy from me here. There are far too many parasites in America who drain their families, relatives, & the economy.
Social programs are causing poor people to lose incentive to improve themselves. Social programs make poor people's lives easy. My solution: cut the social programs & the poor will realize that they have to work & earn their way in society. Before social programs, poor people realized that they had to depend UPON THEMSELVES if they wanted a better life. Now, the gub'mint provides the poor with a better life. The WORST thing to do for a poor people is to financially help them for it makes them lazy. The BEST thing is to teach them to be self-supporting...…...
The grasshopper dies anyway, no matter if he stores for the winter, or not. Try the rich man and the poor man for a righteous comparative fable.
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