CDR: Re: The Ant and the Grasshopper, Election Version

[Mac Norton]

And then the locusts descend. And they feed. Because the ants
and the grasshoppers never could get their shit together.
MacN

On Mon, 13 Nov 2000, Tim May wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> The Ant and the Grasshopper, Election Version
> 
> 
> Original
> 
> 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 ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no 
> food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
> 
> 
> Da Hoppers in Da 'Hood
> 
> The ants work hard to make their businesses prosperous, their farms 
> productive. They save and invest and educate their children. The 
> grasshoppers party all summer, hangin' out with the homeys, struttin' 
> on the beaches, and figurin' that Massah Bill Clintonhopper in the 
> Big White Plantation House will keep on sending dat federal welfare 
> money to Florida to keep the crack pipes full.
> 
> To a Grasshopper-American, it's all obvious: Why work when government 
> is there? Why save when Hillary is promising to raise taxes on the 
> ants? Hard work is for suckers, or, as they say, suckas. Besides, 
> Albert Gorehopper invented the Internet. Ironically, the hard-working 
> ants make use of the Internet, but the crack-smoking hopheads say 
> that "books are for whitey." Better yet, to the grasshoppers, the top 
> Demohoppers have made it their top campaign pledge to take away the 
> guns of the ants. (The Hopper Bloods and Crips get a good laugh out 
> of this one, as they know the hopper gangbangers will still have 
> their Uzis and AKs.)
> 
> Winter arrives, and the Demohoppers have made their final promises to 
> the crack-dealing, Bingo-playing, welfare-taking grasshoppers of 
> Florida. The ants are wary, fearing what the grasshoppers will do in 
> the name of "democratic fairness."
> 
> The ants appear to have won the vote, but the Demohoppers in Palm 
> Beach County claim that some butterflies confused them and that they 
> want a "do over." Hopper Jesse Jackson, who once called New York City 
> "Hymietown," has made a new alliance with the "Judenhoppers" of 
> affluent Palm Beach. He calls in Al Sharpton, Alan Dershowitz, and 
> Tawana Brawley to help his Hopper Crusade. He threatens a war between 
> the ants and the grasshoppers unless the hoppers get as many chances 
> to vote and re-vote and fiddle with the ballots as they need to let 
> Albert Gorehopper win.
> 
> The grasshopper strategy is to take the counties which were most 
> heavily infested with grasshoppers and then do a "manual count" to 
> find more votes which the neutral machines had rejected because they 
> were incorrectly punched, or double punched, or had chads hanging. 
> The grasshoppers have been told that, from basic statistics, this 
> biased re-counting will ensure that Albert Gorehopper gets enough 
> extra votes to win.
> 
> The ants say that this is a theft of the election and that the 
> grasshoppers just want more handouts from the hopheads in Hopperton, 
> D.C., and, besides, if the grasshoppers had bothered to learn how to 
> read and weren't smoking so much crack they'd've had no problems with 
> butterflies.
> 
> The Chief Grasshopper sends his team of lawyerlocusts, close 
> relatives of grasshoppers, into Florida. The ants try to block a 
> recount in hopper havens like Broward, Palm, and Volushia. The 
> Grasshopper-Americans scream dat dis be racist!
> 
> The promised war begins and the ants kill all the grasshoppers. No 
> longer will the grasshoppers use the "democratic process" to take the 
> food the ants had worked so hard for. Life is once again good.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [Note: I wrote everything here except the "Original." I mention this 
> because it is routine for people to pass around various versions of 
> the "Ant and the Grasshopper" without indicating who wrote which 
> parts. So, Tim May wrote all but the opening set-up paragraph. Tim 
> May, 11-13-2000]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
> Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
> ComSec 3DES:   831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
> W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
> "Cyphernomicon"             | black markets, collapse of governments.
> 
>