Ahhh Grasshopper

[JEFFfromNC]

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's 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 others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC 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." Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We Shall Overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Tom Daschle and John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Peter Jennings 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 Equality and 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. Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients during his administration.

The ant loses the case. The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and his house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.

You figure out the moral of the story!!!
I did not write this but enjoyed it so I thought I would share.
-Jeff

[diesel]

classic argument of fiscal conservatism against a welfare state. its fine and dandy and yes, i side with the ant in this fine bed time story said softly to future boarding school kids as theyre tucked into bed. BUT, in the real world, some ants are just exploiters and crooks and do nothing but fend for themeselves and only themselves, gathering more food than they need, living in lavish homes bigger than they need, pimping their fur coats and diamonds, while some grasshoppers do not have the same resources or means to even eat. some of the same grasshoppers learn to exploit the system that the kerry’s, kennedy’s, and roosevelt’s have fought hard to establish to benefit the working man or animal in this case. its tough to make these kinds of policys when the intent is to create a semi socialist welfare system when the mindset of the people is focused on the individual instead of the public. its the old arugment about the philosophy of a culture, which one are we: the squeaky wheel gets the grease; or, the nail that sticks out gets hammered.

thanks for the post jeff.

[Phrazz]

Some are like cockroaches, yet others are spiders, ready to ensnare both the unwary grasshopper and ant alike. Then there's the scorpion, who noone wants to mess with, and the bees, who are busy like that and just fly away.

Fiscal conservatism? To not help those in need is indeed conservative, but I would not say this administration is exemplary in any way about saving money. Indeed, they have spent more money than any administration in history (mostly on war and interest on the debt, followed closely by welfare because the situation is really that bad for the millions whose jobs were shipped off to China or Mexico).

We can try to compare people to bugs, but that's kind of racist in a sense. I think this was written by someone who can't use the terms black and white for fear of retaliation (try changing grasshopper to black and ant to white and you see what I mean). When I say China and Mexico I mean the countries, not the people. Government enslave their own people: forgive me for stating the obvious.

We are all slaves in one sense or another (except for a select few, most of whom were born into money, others are born into poverty).

If ants and crickets were all born into the same wealth, injustice would be rare. Social inequality becomes catastrophic when the greedy turn stealing into a religion. Or they turn to religion to assuage their guilt from grand larceny.

The greedy keep their money because of the ceaseless toil of the penniless and underfed masses. The very roads, bridges, schools and hospitals in this country were borne on the backs of slave laborers who continue to put up with all the bullshit the Kleptocrats are trying to feed them. At a certain point, this inequity will reach a boiling point. That is the unfortunate destiny of stratification of society. When the rich get richer and the poor go to jail, the middle class can't afford it anymore. Something has got to give.

-Phrazz

[diesel]

dont worry. as long as theres alcohol, reality shows, war, celebrity worship, citcoms, video games, movies, jam bands, and other great distractions we wont need to think about the social devide and the flaws of religion based governments.

now, please, lets get back to work.

work
consume
discard
repeat