You know what really bugs me?....
A couple of weeks ago, some big black ants decided to visit our sun porch. I'm not sure why. I don't know what ants eat, but whatever it is, I'm sure there is more of it outside than there is in our house. And I don't really mind if they just visited and would stay on the porch for a while, but for some reason they decided to look for something to eat in other parts of the house.
If they would have just asked, I would have told them they were out of luck, but they didn't even ask. I tried shooing them out, but either their little tiny ant ears couldn't hear me, or they simply chose to ignore me.
As a last resort, I bought some ant poison to put out for them. Since they didn't have any luck finding anything else to eat, I figured they might give it a try. Sure enough, before too long, I started seeing some sick and dying ants on the floor. Eventually, there got to be a big pile of dead ants around the ant poison.
The odd thing was, even when the dead ants started piling up around the poison, the ants that were still alive kept coming in for more. Even if they had to crawl over the dead bodies of other ants. I began to think that maybe the problem wasn't that they couldn't hear me, but maybe that they just weren't all that bright.
I guess when it comes right down to it though, we've seen the same behavior out of people. People have been going to the government for years thinking it can solve their problems. The government has declared war on poverty, war on drugs, and war on terrorism. After spending trillions of taxpayer dollars, the poverty rate remains about the same as when the war was started. Drug use hasn't been curtailed, but we have the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world. We've traded foreign attacks on our liberties for domestic attacks by the NSA, the DEA, and even the FDA. 70 of the federal "alphabet agencies" now have armed divisions and arrest powers.
We're putting up with this, along with reaching a $17 trillion dollar debt sometime in the next month or two. And next year, come election time, we'll overlook the mess they've created, and go back and vote for the same people and the same policies that got us into this shape in the first place.
Maybe we're not all that bright, either.
There's a Better Alternative , but we have to be willing to step outside of where we are now.
If they would have just asked, I would have told them they were out of luck, but they didn't even ask. I tried shooing them out, but either their little tiny ant ears couldn't hear me, or they simply chose to ignore me.
As a last resort, I bought some ant poison to put out for them. Since they didn't have any luck finding anything else to eat, I figured they might give it a try. Sure enough, before too long, I started seeing some sick and dying ants on the floor. Eventually, there got to be a big pile of dead ants around the ant poison.
The odd thing was, even when the dead ants started piling up around the poison, the ants that were still alive kept coming in for more. Even if they had to crawl over the dead bodies of other ants. I began to think that maybe the problem wasn't that they couldn't hear me, but maybe that they just weren't all that bright.
I guess when it comes right down to it though, we've seen the same behavior out of people. People have been going to the government for years thinking it can solve their problems. The government has declared war on poverty, war on drugs, and war on terrorism. After spending trillions of taxpayer dollars, the poverty rate remains about the same as when the war was started. Drug use hasn't been curtailed, but we have the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world. We've traded foreign attacks on our liberties for domestic attacks by the NSA, the DEA, and even the FDA. 70 of the federal "alphabet agencies" now have armed divisions and arrest powers.
We're putting up with this, along with reaching a $17 trillion dollar debt sometime in the next month or two. And next year, come election time, we'll overlook the mess they've created, and go back and vote for the same people and the same policies that got us into this shape in the first place.
Maybe we're not all that bright, either.
There's a Better Alternative , but we have to be willing to step outside of where we are now.
posted by Rex Bell at 10:47 AM
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