Red Ants Don't Like Black Ants

 

(Editor's Note:  The following arrived from Ranger Bob yesterday in the form of an email, and while it prompted me to reach for the dictionary a couple of times, I found his message to be both amusing and thought-provoking.  My own thoughts on conflating politicians with ants is that, by and large, ants do less damage.  Enjoy.)

Red Ants Don't Like Black Ants

by Bob Randall

My neighbor and I stood at the property line looking at each other.

Fooled you, we were friendly. We talked about my water drainage problem and how I might dig a little ditch to help drain it. Since neither of us know exactly where the property line is, I wanted to talk to him. He was OK with whatever I wanted to do. We switched the topic to his flower garden and next thing we knew, I was standing in the middle of it pointing out which of his vegetation was what kind of flower (or weed). There was a brief mention of politics. It was odd that one of us was a lifelong Republican who now calls himself an Independent who will never vote Republican again while the other is a lifelong Democrat who is going to vote Republican in the next election. The political discussion didn’t last long because we both knew we didn’t want to slip into the quagmire where our former political parties are drowning. 

I later wondered to myself how each of us looked at the same issues and came up with different voting decisions. I thought that maybe we were like little boys with magnifying glasses looking at ants. I had red ants in my yard and he had black ants in his yard. We scrutinized different colonies of ants. I made observations about red ants and he made observations about black ants. 

I think a lot of people find (or rationalize) an answer that satisfies them and fail to look further. I’m pretty happy with my ant answer, even though it may only be a partial answer, but I shouldn’t be satisfied. There has to be more.

A couple of days later I was reading one of my favorite blogs. There was an issue about how identitarianism is incompatible with humanism. You can read the original article the blogger referenced here. If I ever get to the point that the word identitarianism ever rolls smoothly off my tongue, I’ll let you know. It seems to be advocating for the political interests of a group. The point of this essay is not about humanism that the blogger was referencing, it’s about how we look at the same things with different colored lenses. 

A day after that, I read another of my favorite blogs. The author was referencing the very same article but was in an alternate universe from the first blogger. I was dismayed that two of my favorite bloggers were now at each other’s throats. Then I read the comments. On the first day, I agreed with a few of the comments, and disagreed with a few of the comments, and found that a few of the comments didn’t make any sense at all. I followed up on the next day’s comments. Wowecazowy! The well-thought-out comments were now buried under the newer comments and were almost nowhere to be found. The comments were lacking good thought, they were biased, and they were mean. They quickly got off into the weeds and didn't seem to be talking about the same things. I will admit that one side seemed worse than the other but maybe that was my bias showing through. The two groups were, indeed, making observations about different colored ants and would give no quarter to ants of the other color.

Let me remind you that their original topic was about a split in humanism. With over 4,000 religions in the world, I expect a lot of crazy arguments about religion. (If you want to argue about the number, just substitute the words “a lot” for "over 4,000" and let me say that you suffer from Identitarianism). I didn’t expect such vitriolic arguments from humanists. 

I haven’t looked at either blog’s comments yet today. When I work up the courage, I will. I have reached two conclusions, (a) identitarianism IS incompatible with humanism. The commenters proved that. (b) red ants don’t like black ants.