On The American Agricultural Ideal

Georgia Fire Ants!

They were big and aggressive. They died soon too.

I threw away the farm a few weeks ago.

source

It's difficult to explain how I came to be reading Amazon customer reviews for Uncle Milton's Ant Farm. Sometimes these things just happen.

And sometimes, on the third page of variously cloying and bloodthirsty (and sometimes just weird) comments, the history of America appears, condensed and perfect.

"Georgia Fire Ants" recapitulates the beginning, middle, and end of the Jeffersonian dream of a farming utopia.

The first line throbs with manifest destiny, American Exceptionalism, all the tumescence of a new nation.

Line 2: loss of innocence. Inevitable conflict and shocking revelations of vulnerability: the Civil War, Sherman's burning of Atlanta, Manzanar, Vietnam.

Line 3: "I threw away the farm" -- as we have thrown away Jefferson's dream of a nation of small farmers in favor of our current nation of shoppers -- "a few weeks ago". The final, Eliot-esque touch. The dream dies and is denied even a funeral; the obituary appears too late to send flowers.