I've got a friend of mine who is a neighbor of my ex-boyfriend in Baltimore. He's a good guy, a veterinarian with a great wife and kids and he makes pretty good homemade wine. But he's also a Republican and occasionally like to send emails like this one:
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...' ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the SEIU group singing, We shall overcome. Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake, while he damns the ants.
President Obama condemns 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 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 GreenCzar 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 2012.
I've sent this to you because I believe that you are an ant, not a grasshopper!
Make sure that you pass this on to other ants.
Don't bother sending it on to any grasshoppers because they wouldn't understand it, anyway...
My response to this inanity below the fold...
It's a great story, except that the "modern version" of it is far-right propagandist bullshit (sorry, but no other word is sufficiently accurate) and completely contrary to reality.
What of the vast majority of people who did work hard and got laid off and now can't find work? The current economy is only benefiting a fraction of this country, while the rest of us are gradually hung out to dry. Look at the CEOs taking huge bonuses while they cut employee pay and ship jobs oversees. Many of them are even getting bonuses while running a failing company into the ground and putting thousands out of work. And then we reward these bastards for it by cutting their taxes. Where's the justice in that? The top 1% in this country take everything and put very little back into the economy. Give a rich person a tax cut and it just ends up in a mutual fund somewhere or an IRA. Give a poor or middle class person a job and the money actually gets spent on goods and services. Reagan's voodoo economics has failed and it's time to put it to pasture for good.
I've got a friend in San Francisco who works from the unemployment office and he hears so many stories of people who worked for twenty, thirty, or even forty years for their companies only to get shafted by them that it's taking a toll on his health. Thanks to the Republicans in Congress and their unwillingness to do anything about this mess, he's able to help fewer and fewer of them. These people did nothing wrong - they worked hard, played by the rules and were given nothing in return when push came to shove. What would you say to them if you met them in person? I hope it wouldn't be the story below.
Another way to look at it is this: what happens when your clients are out of work and can't afford to pay for your services when their pet gets sick. Both the pet and you suffer as a result. Even when you've got work, this economy still isn't benefiting much of anyone.
The far right can call me a socialist all they want, but it seems to me that just about anything would be better than this job killing mess we've got right now. The social safety net was designed to protect people from the inherent injustices of unfettered capitalism. Instead of killing off those services, why don't the Republicans try to actually improve the capitalist system so it works for everyone instead of just their wealthy backers? If they did, those services might be a little less needed and we'd save money just by having more people working on not being forced to rely on them. Otherwise, don't be too shocked when the London riots land a little closer to home. Income inequality and economic injustice (along with police brutality, of which there is no shortage here) have dire consequences if left untreated.