Parade of the Ants

A long time ago and far, far away, there was an ancient magical land where there was no poverty, no wealth. Wholesome food grew freely everywhere, good housing (overflowing with nice clothes) sprang up from the earth itself. Beautiful trees, flowers and birds of every color filled every neighborhood providing shade, exotic music, and Nature's perfume to everybody. There was no money and no need to work. Everyone had just what they required, and they were all equal in every way, with equal rights and equal opportunities. It was summer all the time, and everyone was a beautiful, uniform tan. There were no laws and no police, people had learned to tame their hateful, greedy passions and so the evil, repressive Government dissolved, leaving a self-disciplined citizenry to their own devices. In place of state authority, there were only the priests. Eerie, not altogether human, they maintained the magic which supported the whole country. They called themselves "Liberals," and they worshipped a benign, Third Way god named Sri Willie Klinton who was kind, strong, just, and lovely to behold. From him, through the Liberals, came the spirit and virility of the land, and everyone was grateful. The people loved Sri Willie, and sent their daughters to intern in his temple.

There was one girl, chubby enough to be almost two girls, who, through her considerable talents, rose to become the head-intern. Her name was Honica. Honica Chewblintzky. She was madly in love with the cosmic Lord Klinton, and utterly devoted to the Liberals' cause. But she was unhappy with herself. No matter how many wonderful and tender things she did on behalf of Sri Willie, she always felt inadequate. "Surely I can do more," she always thought, even when there was no more to be done. "I'm just not good enough for him, not worthy of him. He'll never want me!" she'd lament. After months of this constant inappropriate masochistic self-rebuke, she had pined away to a mere 240 pounds. The Liberal priests worried for her health, and they prayed to Lord Klinton that he might save her life in return for her pathetic, self-consumptive devotion to him.

One night, after a meager nun's dinner (only three corned-beef, sauerkraut, and ranch dressing on rye sandwiches; and only one jar of dill pickles), she fell into a swoon from malnutrition. And in this fitful, painful state, she had a vision of her heart's desire.

She was standing on the grassy bank of a lazy, shallow river. The sun was high and bright, and out in the water, stuck on a sandbar, was an old pick-up truck. Its bed was covered with astro-turf. On this green plastic lawn, under a big beach umbrella, was a ragged Lazy-Boy recliner. There were beer cans strewn about, some of them floating in the water, some washing up on the shore. And, stretched out on the comfy chair, lay the great Celestial Lord Sri Willie Klinton himself. He seemed to be napping, but she knew that with his every wheezing breath, the entire universe was created, un-created, then re-created in an endless cycle of fertility and ruin. She was almost incontinent with joy.

Aware of her adoring musk, he turned and looked at her. She squeaked with delight, then spun around, dropped to her hands and knees, and pulled up her skirt so he could see her butt. It was the standard posture of worship, and it affected the god in the desired manner. He unwrapped a cigar, licked his lips, and said,

"No, no, my dear Honica. Come here with me. I need you." In a shot, she got up and turned back to find that, magically, the pick-up was only one step off the shore, and the bed had become much more oval. The lounge-chair was replaced by an office chair. Pointing down to a spot on his left, he said, "Here Sweetheart, serve at my pleasure." Squeaking again, she fell to her knees and looked up at him with tears of love welling in her eyes.

"I have seen the unhappiness in your heart, and I feel your pain. I have placed these self-doubts in your psyche so you might overcome them and become enlightened."

"Oh Great Lord," she blubbered, "How can I become enlightened when I'm so silly and ignorant? Can't you just make me a better intern instead? Wouldn't that please you even more? You wanna fool around?"

"All things in their own time." He pointed at the shore and said, "Look there, along the bank!"

She didn't see anything. "What are you talking about?" she said, the stirrings of annoyance in her voice. "I don't get it.....just like always."

"Look more closely!!" he commanded. As if through a lens, she saw some ants walking along the waterline in several parallel rows. Upon further scrutiny, she saw that there were millions of ants, all in a long procession which stretched infinitely upstream and infinitely downstream. From the mists of the past to the mists of the future, every ant that ever was and ever will be marched in this silent, somber parade. Turning back to Sri Willie, she asked "Why is this happening? Why did you show this to me?"

"Each one of them, in a past life or a life to come, is a devoted, hard-working temple intern. Each one pleases me in her own way, good or bad, and then I discard her like an insect. She never was, and never will be, anything more than a bug to me. Their cycle of physical service is endless. As an intern, this is your fate as well. Do you see the lesson?"

"No, I still don't get it......I never do. You wanna fool around, like, ...... now?"

"Okay," he said.

A few hours later, she came out of her visionary swoon. She was in her nun's cell, laying on her bed, surrounded by the Liberal priests. They were fascinated by a stigmata-like manifestation of sticky white fluid all over her blue intern's robe. When she explained her experience to them, they took her robe on the pretext of saving it as a relic, but she could see them out in the hall, fighting each other to lick at the supernatural goo.

It wasn't long before the intensity of her dream wore off and she returned to the vanity of thinking that she could please Lord Klinton more than any of the other interns, back to thinking that he would notice her in particular above all the others, back to thinking that she could overcome her fate with good intentions. And so her one single chance to get out of the box, to shed her conflicts and her life's worries, to become enlightened, walked out the door never to return. To this day she's still in love with Lord Sri Willie Klinton, still at the temple, still fat. And you can bet your last buck that Lord Klinton can't tell her from the rest of the ants in the parade.

Everyday liberal activists are in the same quandary. Possessed of a commissar's pride, each of them is a vain little world-saver, ever eager for the grateful salutes of a grateful citizenry. Yet their cause, International Third Way Numerical-Parliamentary Socialist Utopianism, can only be populated by a billions-strong herd of "equal" individuals jockeying for benefits in a zero-sum game money-pie, wherein no one dare rise above the others for fear of hurting the rest. Their self-aggrandizing activism is a weird, paradoxical kind of heresy, amounting to the slogan: Worship me for bringing you atheism. Or: In my perfect humility, I am the noblest of all.

Like Honica, they're really just ants, just bugs in the greater Liberal scheme of things. But each of them wants to be the best, most appreciated ant of them all. Time and again, the elected official for whom they work lies to them, betrays them, steals from them, screws them, sets them up in legal traps, and treats them like insects. But do they get out of the box, do they shed their difficulties, do they even accept their fate? No, they work harder and harder for the Liberal cause, with the omnipresent paradoxical hope that they can rise above the class of conformist-individualists they're trying to create from the rest of us. But they can't, they're just bugs, unenlightened ants (well, cockroaches too), each indistinguishable from the others, in an eternal parade of ants, while their god lounges in the bed of an old pick-up truck, smoking intern-flavored cigars. How Utterly Pitiful.

(Originally Posted Sept. 19, 1999)

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