2/2/15

The Ant and the Grasshopper, 2015

From our  all-seeing Alaska contributor, TG, come these modernized parables:

OLD  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 OLD STORY:
 Be  responsible for yourself!

 MODERN   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 ...'

Occupy  the Anthill stages  a  demonstration in front of the ant's
house  where the news stations film the SEIU group singing, We  shall overcome.
 Then  Rev Al Sharpton's assistant has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper
while  he damns the ants. The Reverend Al can not attend as he has contractual commitments to appear on his MSNBC show for which he is paid over two million dollars a year to complain that rich people do not care.
 President  Obcondemns  the ant and blames President  Bush 43, President Bush 41, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight….
 Nancy  Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview on The View  
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  peaceful, neighborhood.
 The  entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of  the free world with it.

MORAL  OF THE STORY:
 Be  careful how you vote in  2016.