The Grasshoppers Are Swarming Mad That You Are Prepared For The Crash
Brandon Smith
Alt-Market.com
Wednesday, 25 March 2020
Most people are familiar with the tale of the Ant And The Grasshopper, an ancient fable about a grasshopper who spends the fruitful months of spring and summer in idle recreation, dancing and playing carelessly while the industrious ant works tirelessly to prepare for what he knows will be a harsh winter. In many versions the Grasshopper harasses the Ant, criticizing him for wasting so much time on work when he could be out enjoying himself in the sun.
Eventually, winter does arrive and it is as brutal as the Ant had predicted. Not surprisingly, the carefree Grasshopper finds himself cold and starving with no supplies, begging the Ant to share the bounty he had worked so hard to procure over the summer. The Ant refuses, telling the Grasshopper he can “dance the winter away, now….”
What many people do not know is that there is also a decidedly more socialist version of The Ant And The Grasshopper written by a French poet named Jean de La Fontaine in which the Ant is portrayed as the bad guy, and his industry as “mean spirited”. And here in this little fable we have represented one of the greatest conflicts of our modern era:
Should the people that refuse to work and prepare be bailed out and saved from their laziness and foolishness? Or should they be allowed to suffer for their mistakes? And if they are bailed out, should they be bailed out by the very people they used to mock for working so hard; the people they used to mock for seeing the danger ahead?
Now, in the versions I read as a child the ant did not just work diligently while ignoring the grasshopper; he consistently tried to warn the grasshopper that winter was coming, but the grasshopper was incredulous. And, I have to say if we apply this fable as an allegory to our current situation in the middle of a pandemic and economic collapse the ants (preppers) have been LOUDLY pleading with the grasshoppers to stock supplies because a crisis event on a national and global scale was inevitable.
Our industry has hardly been mean spirited; we gave other people every chance to see the danger and prepare. We tried to save them. We went above and beyond. Yet, some grasshoppers out there now claim that this is not enough. They want a sacrifice…
Over the past couple weeks we have seen an avalanche of articles which label people stocking supplies as “hoarders”, not to mention a number of bizarre arguments by economists on why stockpiling goods is “bad for the economy”. Even Donald Trump has been telling Americans to “stop hoarding supplies” and to have faith that food will still be in the stores weeks from now. Preppers are being accused as the main culprits behind the rush.
I would point out that the vast majority of people that are suddenly rushing to stores to load up on goods during the crisis are NOT really preppers. Preppers were already equipped for this event months or years in advance. Preppers were buying their their extra supplies two or three months ago when they first heard about the virus threat. We all knew what this meant not just for public health, but the economy overall.
The current narrative is essentially lumping together all the people who have stockpiled goods meticulously over years in with people who raced to Costco a few days ago to buy all the toilet paper, and I think this is a deliberate misrepresentation.
Hoarder is a negative word used to describe people who were smart enough to prepare ahead of time by people who were not smart enough to prepare ahead of time.
The Rest…HERE
