06.28.12

On Fire Ants

Posted in Extremism at 1:47 pm by George Smith

Google’s news tab highlighted a weak column by some nobody writing for US News & World Report.

Lara Brown, who has allegedly written a book entitled Jockeying for the American Presidency: The Political Opportunism of Aspirants, asserts the upholding of Obamacare will only inspire the opposition to greater heights of … what, exactly?

As extremists, they’re already as aggressive as possible. (In an aside, someone actually used the word “aspirants” in a title for a book. That level of unconscious self-sabotage is virtually Freudian. Either that or she can’t write at all.)

Here’s a bit from her short essay:

But nothing excites a party more than a political loss. And so today, while Democrats are basking in the sunlight of this decision, Republicans are raising unbelievable amounts of money and strongly coalescing behind Romney’s candidacy. Social conservatives and small government libertarians now believe their only hope to save America from becoming a European-style social democracy is to elect Mitt Romney and repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

If anything, the Supreme Court has helped the GOP more than it helped Obama.

I think the GOP is more like a colony of fire ants that once inhabited a driveway crack next to a house where I lived in Pasadena.

I discovered they were fire ants, not the usual common brown ants, when I inadvertently set up the weekend evening’s barbecue grill over their colony one summer. As I stood there grilling I noticed brown ants underfoot.

Believe me, these boots don’t help.

Three minutes later I was in the house with my boots, trousers and socks off, trying to get them off my lower half. My foot swelled up to just short of the size where I could put on a shoe. I wore flip-flops for ten days but not anywhere near the fire ants.

I found that if you stood within even three feet of the fire ant colony they came for you. I made that mistake twice.

The fire ants were implacable. Their level of hostility never varied. If you got in their space, appeared on their insect radar, they attacked in a swarm. Very quickly.

You had to hand it to the fire ants. They never did the live and let live thing. The house cats also gave the colony much respect.

Only the yard mockingbirds had an answer. They ate them occasionally. And I could not discern how they managed it.

Spraying the fire ant colony didn’t do much except force them into hiding for a couple weeks.

We were reluctant to call authorities or outside pros. Fire ants had been in the news as unwanted interlopers in the area. If you found a colony you were to inform local government and someone, or a crew, would be sent to handle it. I reasoned that if this was done half the driveway would be destroyed and the yard made sterile for ten years with insecticide.

So we lived with the fire ants, learning to give them a wide birth. And one winter season there was so much rain, the part of the driveway where they lived was under an inch of water for two weeks.

All the fire ants drowned and were never seen again.

The GOP, an extremist party, was like that colony of fire ants. They are always inspired in their hostility to enemies. And no matter the conditions, like the fire ants, they are 100 percent united and always totally vigorous in their fury.

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