Once, in a faraway land, in the city of New Antsterdam, a new generation of ants came about. This generation of ants was educated by a new group of educators that had immigrated from another continent because of political uprisings.
To be sure, the ants in charge at the time were very magnanimous and had allowed the educators to come into the country under political asylum. The educators were happy to come in at the expense of the working ants and educate the next generation of working ants. The educators were aardvark sympathizers.
Years went by and the educators eventually brought the students minds around to all the wonders of the political views of the aardvark. Aardvarks had been maligned for centuries. The ants had seen the devastation caused by anteaters in wars past for centuries and been led to believe that aardvarks were pretty much the same as the anteater. The educators finally convinced the entire population that aardvarks were not the same, that the political systems of the aardvarks and the anteaters were entirely different. The anteater was a very cold-blooded killer that unilaterally wanted to decimate the ant population; the aardvark was a suppressed minority group that had been maligned because of their appearance.
Eventually aardvarks gained complete political asylum and eventually citizenship. No one paid any attention to the small number of ants that were disappearing in the neighborhoods where the aardvarks had taken up residence. When someone did accuse the aardvarks of causing trouble and possibly even murder, the media threw the sympathy card that this poor oppressed aardvark had been torn from his country and was just trying to make a living and that it was the ant’s fault for being born into privilege. Pretty soon everyone was on the aardvarks’ sympathy bandwagon and the ants voted to give the aardvarks more subsidies to improve their living conditions.
On the heels of this, aardvarks started running for political offices and eventually started winning. The hearts of the ants were turned toward the aardvarks.
One day, some uneducated rube ants that had been raised in the country in the traditional way by their parents, started trouble by accusing the aardvarks of trying to take over the country and bringing in the political system that had failed in the aardvarks’ home country. The city ants that had been educated in the universities got their panties in a knot and started picking off these rubes one by one. No one paid attention much until it just kept happening. A very friendly ant that had been getting the attention of the media because he made some very good points was eliminated when he was giving a speech about the possibility that the things they had been learning might not be quite right.
There should have been a larger uproar, but some rich guy started funding grey haired ladies who were no longer contributing to society to speak against the doubt that had started to come in because of all the ruckus caused by the rube ants. Then for some reason, no one knows why, these little old ant ladies started dying their hair purple and blue, and orange. When archeologists discovered this centuries later, no one ever figured out the reasoning for this.
In the meanwhile, aardvarks were still gaining and holding on to their popularity with a small portion of the population and had begun to buy elections to gain more power. A very charismatic aardvark “won” election in New Antsterdam (one of the main financial hubs of the country). When he won, several ant families, who were more well off than others and had been brought up in homes before the new educators started throwing sympathy to the aardvarks, began to move out of the city in protest against the new administration.
The aardvark had promised all sorts of free stuff from the government coffers, but when he got into office he realized the coffers were about full and that he could only live a mediocre life with what he was making so he started imposing more taxes on the very ants who had elected him. These ants started becoming a little suspicious of the intentions of the aardvark but for some reason these ants started disappearing one by one.
No one knows what happened to the civilization of the ants. When archeologists unearthed some of the remains of the civilization they could only recovery a few ants that had apparently hidden in safes or cabinets where they must have been trying to escape from some unfriendly foe. It seems the educators neglected to tell the ants that even though aardvarks are completely different from anteaters – eventually aardvarks live for the same purpose as anteaters.
You can deduct your own moral from this story, depending on where you have been educated.
~AE
Voice of the Introverts 