Read the commenting rules carefully because they will be enforced!
Miss Beth:
I loved it! Perfect analogy.
Funny... but sadly true in many instances.
Accurate Version:
The Queen Ant has come from a long and storied line of wealth – wealth that the Queen is able to pass along to her descendants through social customs and tax policies designed to maintain and exacerbate the gross concentration of this great land’s bountiful resources into the hands of a privileged few. Meanwhile, the Mexican Jumping Bean and other migrant insects are forced to seek employment outside of their native lands due to the Queen’s ruthless foreign policies such as NAFTA, which work to subsidize and placate domestic worker ants and effectively cripple agrarian-based economies throughout North America and beyond. While the shared struggles of these migrant insects and worker ants present a situation ripe for community building, simple and baseless prejudice and stereotypes such as those articulated in the original post keep this bond from maturing.
The cold, hard reality is that the vast majority of America’s poor are not in their current condition because of any innate character flaws, they are in their present conditions because of underserved schools and communities that can be found in ghettoes and impoverished rural regions across America. There is no need to look to foreign countries to see the faces of the hungry and homeless. They live in places like the Appalachian Mountains and cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and across the Rustbelt where restrictive housing covenants, block-busting, and the exodus of working-class factory jobs have left inner cities throughout America paralyzed and without the resources necessary to spur economic growth. Quite frankly, any attempt to trivialize or mock this plight is repulsive and anathema to the principles of community and patriotism that form the foundation of the American Dream.
http://news.google.com/news?q=ho...n=usa&
scoring=d
What You Should Have Learned in Ant History Class But Apparently Didn't
Modern Ant history begins around 2,000 years ago, when Alfred Ant was crucified on an Ant Cross, so that all bugs would have everlasting life. As Ant Churches organized around the world, Ants found it to be their calling to convert every bug in the World to Antology by any means necessary. Unfortunately, Ant Kings and Queens were the heads of the early Ant churches, and they launched Ant Crusades around the globe, to convert the heathen bugs. If they brought back ships full of gold and treasure, that was a bonus. Ants were smart and industrious, and they developed stingers that were much more technologically advanced than the defenses of other bugs. The Ant explorer Hern-ant-o Cortezzzz reached the Beetle civilization in South America, where his band of 500 Ants and 16 Spiders (on which the Ants rode in battle) mercilessly slaughtered the whole Beetle empire in the name of Alfred. His King was quite pleased with the booty the explorers brought back home.
As regular Ants began to tire of Royal control of the Church, Mart-ant Luther spun off a new version, where there was no middleman. Those who practiced this Protest-Ant-Ism were persecuted severely. Some of them decided to sail to a new world, where they could practice their new religion freely. They met the native people of this new world, and got along rather nicely, since there were no zoning laws, and plenty of room to settle.
Eventually, the Ants got tired of sending their taxes back to Engl-Ant, so they decided to revolt. There's nothing in the world Ants hate more than taxes.
The founding Ants realized that for this new Anthill to work, it would require a Constitution, guaranteeing all bugs equal rights. They also realized that religion could not be a part of government, like it had been in the Old World…what would the point have been if they just created the same problem all over again?
Ants think of themselves as hard workers, but they thought it would be a great idea to send ships over to Grasshopper Island, and bring back a bunch of Grasshoppers as slave labor. Since Grasshoppers are considered less Bugly than Ants, it was thought of as the natural order of things. As the fruits of Grasshopper labor lined Ant pockets, the Ants began the first Real Estate Boom of our time. They expanded Westward, murdering every native bug around, and taking their lands as their own. The more “civilized” native bugs were placed on “reservations” so as not to pollute the ant community. As the Ants made more and more money, they invested it back into their own Ant families, educating their offspring at institutions of Higher Learning.
Ants who had a conscience began to struggle with the moral question of bug equality, while their nation condoned bug slavery. The Republic-Ant leader abolished the practice, and Ant went to war against ant, with hundreds of thousands killed.
Fast forward, to the turn of the century. Cockroaches begin to appear on the landscape. Cockroaches are legal entities that are entitled to the same rights as Ants, but with none of the legal responsibilities. Some are more responsible than others. Some begin to exploit their powers and harm the bugs that made their lives possible. They monopolize the Honey industry. They collude together to fix prices. They exploited child ants, making them work in sweatshops, for 16 hours a day.
Meanwhile, the formerly enslaved, uneducated Grasshoppers have been released into the world, expected to fend for themselves. They own no property. They are forced to use separate bug facilities, and not allowed to mingle with Ants. "Uppity" Grasshoppers are lynched for questioning the status quo. Ants won’t give them jobs.
Religious Ants got the idea they could control other Ants’ behavior, and began to ban things like alcohol and buggery. Google “buggery” some time. They began to control the curriculum of their local schools, indoctrinating their Ant kids into an Ant-I-Social mindset, where anyone who doesn’t act like an Ant should is someone to be feared and hated.
When the Cockroach activities of the early decade resulted in the Great Ant Depression, Ants worked harder than ever, and their pride soared. Surely the Ant God loved the US of Ants. The Ants told their people that the USA was perfect, the chosen country. They waved flags, and sang patriotic songs. Another bug nation, that thought it was the perfect chosen country, had a bug leader who got his bugs up in an even more patriotic nationalistic frenzy, and they began aggressively attacking other bug nations. The Ants and Roaches in charge realized that they had better squash the competition quickly. The Roaches’ companies sold their war products to the USA, and with cooperation and determination, they beat back the Axis of Evil.
National pride was at an all time high, and now all the ants coming back from the war had nothing to do. Some busybody Ants managed to have “Under God” inserted into the Ant Pledge of Allegiance. They began to describe the USA as an Alfred Nation, even though their Ant Fathers had set out to keep religion and government separate. The Conserv-Ant-ives started re-writing Ant history, and propagandizing its population.
That’s also about when Roaches learned how to make the Ants want their products, and the US of Ants began producing a lot of goods. The standard of living was pretty darn good, across the country. Heck, the Chief Executive Roach barely made 4 times what his lowest ant made. Most Ants weren’t yet college educated. Yet the Ant nation thrived. It created new industries, and was the shining example of world capitalism. The Ants and Roaches in charge realized that without a war, they would have to take some money from all the Ants. They taxed the income of ants. But they also realized that taxes were something Ants hated, so they needed to create a diversion.
If the Ant population was scared of some common enemy, they wouldn’t be thinking about their tax dollars disappearing. There were plenty to go around. Buggers, druggers, anyone not conformist enough, they became the enemy. And Grasshoppers, of course. The Ants in Charge told the Ants that Grasshoppers were lazy, and they wanted to live on welfare sucked from their own hard work. Of course, Grasshoppers were just as hard workers as ants. Anyone who questioned the fairness of their system was labeled with the worst insult of them all…LIBERAL. The liberal’s first cousin was called a Communist. And it just so happened that the second most powerful bug-state in the world was the Dragonflies. They were the same color as the Ants, but they didn’t believe in the Ant God, or really any God for that matter. So they spent decades convincing the Ant population that the Dragonfly Nation was bent on Ant destruction. They funneled billions of Ant dollars into Roach defense industries. They told the common ants that saving was a virtue, while they ran up the national debt, deferring a horrible legacy to their Ant heirs.
While the Ant nation was distracted with trembling fear of nuclear annihilation, the Roaches had their Ant Special Forces, and the Central Ant-elligence Agency infiltrate smaller bug nations, and overthrow their democratically elected leadership, installing puppet dictators that would line their Roach pockets. The citizens of these smaller bug nations resented the interference, but the US of Ants was too strong to stand up to.
When honey was discovered in abundance in a Ladybug Desert, the Ants found a way to control the governments there too. The ants let ruthless Ladybug dictators oppress their bugs at will, as long as the Honey pipelines flowed. Those oppressed Ladybugs didn’t have such a kind view of Uncle Ant.
On the home front, the Roaches bought up all the TV and Radio outlets, and had the Ants in Charge sell the story that the media was owned by Grasshoppers. They showed Grasshoppers wreaking havoc in the Ant community, although it was usually Grasshopper on Grasshopper. Grasshoppers became objects of fear. One should protect one’s wallet whenever one is spotted. The Ants in charge also found that Grasshoppers liked a little Grass, which became a convenient way to put them behind bars. More than 50% of male Grasshoppers are under incarceration. One War-Hawkish ant even bought drugs from a foreign bug-nation to finance his other war project, and had the drugs sent into a poor Ant neighborhood.
Ants didn’t even notice that its national wealth had been draining into the coffers of the Roaches. The Ant Leaders had cut the Roach Capital Gains Tax to less than half of what the average Ant paid. Roach businesses were granted tax “incentives” that meant the tax burden was again shifted to the Ants, but again, they were told that was good business. As their profits continued to increase, the Roaches got even hungrier. They figured that since an American Ant was unionized, and thus overpaid, then they should have some Ant-Onesian from a country with no natural resources make the product for 13 cents an hour. The poor bug from the third world would appreciate their generosity. He would then sell his Ant-Onesian gadgets at Roach-Mart for $19.95, which made the Ants very happy, to be able to buy things so cheaply.
However, the less educated Ants who used to make a good living making things, now had nothing to make. The Ant pundits again chided them for being such lazy, good for nothing Ants.
Then one day, the Ants elected the dimmest Ant of them all to be their leader. He surrounded himself with Roaches, and Ant Pundits, and they got the hate machine rolling. Some oppressed Ladybugs from one of the countries where his buddies were in charge blew up a big anthill, causing many deaths, and a sense of national anger. Nobody could understand why they hated Ants for their freedom. They needed some revenge, quick. His dimness realized that he
Commenting by HaloScan
