I have no idea who is the original author, but if anyone knows, please tell me so I can give credit for this phenomenal adaption of the fable “the Ant and the Grasshopper”:
There once was an ant who worked hard in the withering heat and rain of a steamy summer, building his house and laying in supplies for the approaching winter. A passing grasshopper thought the ant a fool. Why waste a good summer toiling when there is much time to laugh and dance and play? Come winter, the ant was snug in the house he built, and well-fed on the food he worked so hard to find and store. The starving, shivering grasshopper was none too pleased with this blatant unfairness and called a press conference to demand, “Why should this ant be warm and well-fed while I stand before you famished and cold?”
CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC and ABC showed video of the shivering grasshopper next to video of the ant in his comfortable home with its well-stocked pantry. America was stunned by the sharp contrast. “How can this be,” left-leaning commentators opined, “that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer while the wealthy ant drowns in abundance?”
Occupy the Anthill staged a demonstration in front of the ant’s house, where news stations filmed union activists, rabble-rousers and those marginally attached to the economy singing, “We shall overcome.” The Rev. Jeremiah Wright led the useful idiots in prayer for the grasshopper’s wellbeing while condemning the ant’s parsimonious attitude toward the suffering of his fellow countryman.
President Obama blamed a system that fosters such disparities among its citizens and announced the creation of a new government agency to ensure that such injustices never again soil America. Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid savaged the ant for “getting rich off the back of the hard-working, underprivileged classes.” Both called for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share, giving government the means to spread the wealth so that grasshoppers across America can live a dignified life.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission drafted the Fairness and Income Leveling Act, the FAIL Act, and made it retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant was fined for having failed to hire a proportionate number of green bugs to build his house and gather his stores for winter. Having no means to pay the excessive taxes and retroactive fines, the ant lost his home to government confiscation.
The grasshopper, meanwhile, was given access to free housing and food subsidized by the onerous taxes and fines imposed on the ant. With nothing left to gain, the grasshopper returned to his sluggard ways. He spent the following summer dancing, laughing and playing … and died from starvation that following winter. The media, off wronging the next right, never noticed.
With nothing left to lose, the ant returned to doing what he always did – busting his butt to prepare for tomorrow. He built his house anew and restocked his pantry. Only he did it overseas, where government doesn’t confiscate wealth to pay the freight of lazy grasshoppers.
The moral: Perceptions of rich and poor rarely take effort into account. And if the government continues to build up grasshoppers by taking down the industrious ants, a plague of grasshoppers will overrun America.
T.B Rickert's Call 