Why am I talking about beetles? Because I’m a scroll addict. I happened to be wasting my time reading up on Ancient Egypt. I scrolled the scarab and from there I scrolled to actual beetles. Finally, to fireflies, which are beetles.

I discovered a truly Evil Beetle

Let me tell you. Life in the insect world aint no bed of roses.

Consider the Adult Photuris lucicrescens.

The genus Photuris is often called “femme fatale fireflies”, due to the females’ habit of imitating other “lightning bugs'” flashes, to attract, kill, and eat them. Their prey includes such unrelated Lampyrinae like rover fireflies (Photinus).

This is the Rover Firefly, the prey of the femme fatale.

Male Photinus (Rover beetles) emit a flashing light pattern to signal for females. Illegitimate receivers, such as female Photuris beetles, identify these signals and use them to locate the male Photinus, attract them with deceptive signals, and eat them. Lloyd’s study (1966)

Poor bastard is only trying to do the right thing. You might say he’s a law abiding beetle. Within the beetle world, I mean. But abiding the law in the Beetle world don’t always pan out.

The Rover is only trying to attract a mate. Further the species. Instead, He’s gobbled up by a feme fatale. It oughta be a crime. Instead it’s perfectly legal. You see, there’s no justice in the Insect world.

Equal Justice and the rule of law

You want law and order? You want Love, Peace and Understanding? You gotta move up the biological ladder. All the way up, to Human Beings. Once there you’ll find yourself among the species of Homo Sapiens.

Homo Sapiens, modern human beings, appeared on the planet about 300,000 thousand years ago. We started out as hunter gatherers and evolved, slowly, methodically, from a tribal form of existence of might makes right, to our current level of humanity where we live among one another within a complexity of Laws, customs, practices…all of us together…intent on the pursuit of world peace.

Where the Enlightened among us choose Enlightened Leaders.

No one is above the law. We are all created equal!

Some people get their kicks from stepping on a dream

Who woulda figured you could go from bad to worse?

Our sad little dream called Democracy is looking sadder by the day.

You know, we had a nice little democracy going here. It wasn’t perfect, by any means. Nothing’s perfect. But at least we tried to get along. Follow the rules. You might say it was all just a game where we pretended to follow the rules. Some people called the game a sham. I would agree that the game was, and is, a sham. Because so many big shots and billionaires break the rules and get away with it. And yet, the very fact that we continued to play the game. That we were willing to play even knowing it was never perfect. The fact that we were willing to pretend it was worth playing…bestowed it with feeling of legitimacy and made it worth pursuing.

Then this dude came along and stepped all over our sad little game of Democracy.

He Broke it. Or at least he’s intent on breaking it.

Maybe you don’t think it’s broke yet? I happen to think there’s still hope for our sad little Democratic game. I’m thinking if we get some Democratic Socialists into congress we might have a chance of preserving our democracy. Maybe a few more like this guy.

I know, I know, this is my own delusion. We still have a sort of free country. Don’t we? Anyway, this is the Rover Beetle light signal I’m emitting.

A signal that, who knows, may subsequently prove fatal…