Rats vs. Snakes
Which is a pretty good metaphor for what’s happened to the Republican party.
I have a pathological fear of snakes. Have had it since childhood. I have a recurring nightmare that my yard looks like the pit in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and I’m trying to make it to the deck. My friends know this about me, which is why they insist on tagging me with every video of a snake in a car, or story about a house with a billion garter snakes in it. I can no longer sleep at night since I saw the one of that huge snake climbing a tree. I once ended up in Facebook jail because of my comment on one of these stories. The words “castle doctrine” were invoked. The “AlGoreRhythm” interpreted that as a threat.
But I have a REASON for the fear! My old neighborhood was absolutely overrun by copperheads. I’ve found them in the garage, on the deck, in the driveway, and encountered them in the middle of the street on my 5 a.m. walks. The irony that the snakes and I both venture out at the same time during the sweltering summer months is not lost on me. I almost stepped on one while rounding the corner of the house. For years, I warned my neighbors, but they just laughed and told me I was being irrational—until we had a really wet summer and the snakes finally showed themselves. Dogs died. One neighbor was bit on the hand when he stuck his hand in a patch of ivy. Another neighbor had some ivy removed and they FOUND 13 copperheads hiding in it. (Who knows how many they DIDN’T find?) I was like Big Bird after the adults on Sesame Street finally saw the Snuffleupagus. “See! I told you it was real! But you didn’t believe me.”
A friend recently posted on Twitter that her house was infested by rats. The exterminator is going to charge thousands of dollars to rid her of the infestation. Someone suggested that she just let a snake loose and it would eat the rats. I commented that I’d rather have the rats.
Rational people have tried to explain to me that snakes are actually beneficial to the environment. They provide a useful service in ridding us of rodents. In fact, most of them are non-venomous. Then there’s that old “the snakes are really more afraid of you than you are of them” trope. The Crocodile Hunter’s life work was devoted to educating people about the beauty of these creatures. Some people even keep them as pets!
Clearly, they are all adherents of Lord Voldemort out to enslave the rest of us.
So, what’s my point? (Other than a rambling attempt to imitate Jonah Goldberg’s G-File posts.) My point is that I feel the same way about Donald Trump that I do about snakes. You can “But Gorsuch” me all you want. You can keep repeating “well the economy was great until Covid happened.” You can tell me how much worse Biden and the Democrats are, and point out all the terrible errors (Afghanistan, the border, inflation.) And maybe like Jonah you see no need to choose between the rats and the snakes because America will survive either way. I will not be swayed. From the moment he came down that golden escalator I had an instant revulsion. Everything I’ve witnessed in the last decade has reinforced that. Nazis with tiki torches, hawking Bibles on TV, kissing up to Putin, and most of all January 6th. I may not like Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, but I don’t hate it bad enough to forgive trying to overturn the election results or letting the Russians overrun Eastern Europe.
I look at Trump fans—not the people who reluctantly voted for him because “Hillary was worse” but the full-blown red hat-wearing, rally-attending acolytes posting those gross propaganda paintings depicting him as our earthly savior—the same way I look at people who keep snakes as pets. What the hell are you people thinking? That thing does not love you! It has no loyalty to you. It will not defend your home or comfort you when you’re grieving. And given the first opportunity it will literally bite you as you are feeding it. The same thing is true about the human snakes.
Our sad reality right now is that we only have two choices: snake or rat. Pick one. There’s no 3rd option coming to save us before November. Most people have already committed to the side they find less repulsive, or to not choosing between either one.
But here’s the important thing: the copperheads did not appear in my old neighborhood by magic. They were drawn to it—drawn by the vermin. Not so much the rats, but the chipmunks, mice, voles, and other rodents. You see, when the builders built the development, its big draw was large acre lots. That’s what sold my parents on it. There were other subdivisions. Nicer ones. Places that I could now sell for enough money to retire on. But they wanted the big yard. Unfortunately, some of our neighbors got lazy. They WANTED all that yard; they just didn’t want to MAINTAIN it. They left unattended wooded areas that quickly grew wild. You’d need a machete to hack your way through the places my friends and I played in as children. They threw down pine straw around a patch of trees to make islands of “rough area” as my mother called it. Worst of all, they planted large swaths of English ivy. They thought it would look nice: it was green, and it would cover large portions of that acre that they wouldn’t have to mow. Winner! Except ivy is an invasive species. Once planted, it goes EVERYWHERE, even where you don’t want it. It grows up the trees and kills them. It’s toxic. Once it spreads, nothing else can grow there. And it’s like a flashing neon “vacancy” sign for rodents that can from predators like hawks inside of it, and those rodents are what attract the snakes.
Which is a pretty good metaphor for what’s happened to the Republican party.
Americans have grown lazy about our political system just like my former neighbors grew lazy about their yard maintenance, and for the same reason. It’s hard work! Only about 20 percent of us vote in either party’s primary, and then we wonder every November why we only have snakes and rats to choose from! The people with agendas are willing to put in the work. Those with massive egos who seek the spotlight and a position of power are drawn to it like those copperheads to the ivy. It’s the perfect hunting ground! Those with a financial stake in the outcome will absolutely put in the time and the resources. Local developers poured millions of dollars into a referendum on cityhood to stop rezoning efforts. One issue voters, who put all other considerations aside just as long as they get their way on abortion, have staked out their territory in each party to the detriment of everything else. The two parties have collaborated to keep everyone else out of their ecosystem. And they keep all their supporters in line by stoking fear of the OTHER side.
It's actually pretty easy to keep snakes out of your yard. You just have to dry up their food source. Cut your grass. Weed your garden. Don’t let areas become overgrown. Don’t plant anything invasive that’s going to overrun your healthy yard. If you’ve failed to do that, your job just got much harder. You can try spraying it with weed killer, but the weeds eventually become immune. You have to rip out all that ivy by the root, which is not easy. You have to cut it away from the trees, and you have to stay vigilant so that it doesn’t grow back.
Cleaning up our political process will be even harder. There’s a saying on the right: “This is how you got Trump.” The truth is, we got careless. We were more focused on “winning” than we were on what we wanted to accomplish if we won. A bunch of rats kind of took over the place. They kept making promises they had no intention of delivering on. In fact, they knew that if they DID deliver on those promises, the effects would be devastating. So, they lied. Instead of being leaders and explaining why some of these policies (like a total ban on abortion or deporting millions of people) would be bad, they continued to claim they would do these things if ONLY they could win the next election! Or the one after that. Or if they had a larger majority. Or more seats on the Supreme Court. Until finally, a whole bunch of their voters got tired of the pandering and decided that what they really needed was a really big snake to clean house. So, they found one (it was always there so they didn’t have to look hard). A big orange one. Some of the rats hightailed it out of there. But a lot of them made friends with the big snake, convinced that he won’t eat THEM, despite the snake bragging repeatedly about doing just that. A few people actually WANT the snake. They want to wear it around their necks just to gross out people whom they don’t like. Most of those tolerating it would rather call in the reptile removers, but then the rodents would multiply unchecked and that would be worse.
I’ll end my story and my metaphor with this: there is something that can rid your yard of snakes AND rodents. A cat! My old cat Clarence (may he rest in peace in kitty heaven) was a champion hunter. He would catch and dispatch the chipmunks AND the copperheads! For the 19 years he patrolled our neighborhood, we rarely saw either one. We need to find some cats. Super hunting cats.
So, Cats 2028! Who’s with me?
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"From the moment he came down that golden escalator I had an instant revulsion."
I assume you must have had some other reasons for your revulsions. Otherwise, that's pretty superficial hatred.
Back to snakes. I do not like them either, but I like manicured lawns even less although I now have one tended to by the HOA that charges several thousand dollars a year for that and a few other amenities. I resisted such sterile living until after I was 82 years old and felt the need to be less than fifteen miles from a grocery store and closer to hospitals, doctors and family.
When I moved back to my home county after 50 years absence for school, military and earning a living, I purchased a large lot. It was covered with hardwoods, mountain laurel, huckle berry bushes and chinquapins. The wildlife included turkeys (until the coyotes moved in), deer, skunks, raccoons, possums, squirrels, chipmunks and a variety of snakes including copperheads. I cleared a space in the middle to accommodate a house and enough lawn to give me chance of spotting snakes when they crawled out of the woods. It took only one copperhead in the garage for my wife to put me on snake patrol every afternoon.
Very good piece, Merrie.
I gotta ask, though: outside the metaphor, who is our cat savior?
Perhaps unrelated: what do you folks think its the likelihood the Dems are able to replace Biden as the nominee? And what is the outcome of they are?