Thread by @JMHendersonSr

Look at this fascinating insect that I discovered at a friend's house today:

This bug reminds me of why the internet serves as such an excellent resource!

I took out my @SamsungMobile Galaxy, opened my #GoogleAssistant, and said, "orange and black insects in eastern North Carolina."

VOILA!

My Assistant immediately referred me to a page maintained by @NCSU_PDIC, the NC State University's Plant Disease and Insect Clinic:

ncsupdicblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/?m=1&f…

A quick read introduced me to the Orange Assassin Bug!

And, if I had just stopped at a short read, life would have been perfect!

The moment presented a convergence of old studies (my bachelor's degree was in Biology, and I had great courses in entomology and in invertebrate zoology) and new insights, and, frankly disturbing ones.

Ultimately, I realized that the Orange Assassin Bug is the archetype of the politician.

Let me explain:

The Orange Assassin Bug feeds on blood. It enjoys the blood of various hosts, including opossums, raccoons, and, well, humans.

No, if you felt yourself being bitten, you'd react. You'd swat away at the attacker. You swat mosquitoes and you swat horseflies ... because you feel their bite.

Not so with the Orange Assassin Bug Bite. First, the Assassin typically feeds in the night hours, when you're asleep. Second, the bite is, apparently, relatively painless.

A painless bite allows a bloodsucker to feast unrestrictedly.

And, like its invertebrate cousin the Orange Assassin Bug, the politician is a bloodsucker. So the OAB and the politician both have highly refined biting and sucking skills that allow their inexorable work to progress unnoticed, as the body and the body politic rest.

Despite the generosity of we hosts to the politicians and the Orange Assassin Bug, they have no consideration for us, for our rights, or for our dignity.

You see, like us, they process food through their digestive organs. And, like us, eventually, these critters need to #shat.

But unlike us, the Orange Assassin Bug and the politician cannot discontinue feasting in order to go somewhere and defecate.

Instead, they simply #shit where they sit.

And where do they sit?

Well, if you were a bloodsucker and wanted easy access to a rich supply of capillaries and blood vessels, wouldn't you look around the face?

Remember how much bleeding you've experienced with a bloody nose, a cut lip, etc.?

That's a feature of the vasculatory richness of our heads and faces!

So, yes, regrettably, the assassins, both the bug and the politician, tend to sit on our faces for their feasts.

And that means that they #shit on our faces!

Now, that is just wrong. It's a frontal assault on our dignity, our humanity.

But they do it.

And what's worse?

In the morning, you finally start to feel a bit of the itchiness and burning of the site of the bite. So you rub and scratch the wound site before you even think about the possibility that a bug or a politician has been both feasting and defecating on you.

And that means you start working the feces into your wound!

Great, right! The insect and the politician make a feast of our bodies and a commode of our faces!

Fortunately, more or less, that is the end of the story most of the time.

But not always.

If the Assassin Bug or the Politician has been feasting on foreign bodies, then there is the risk that diseases acquired while feasting elsewhere can be transmitted.

One of those diseases is Chagas Disease.

Chagas Disease causes flu-like symptoms, abdominal pains, etc., and can often seem a mild condition. But left untreated it can actually lead to congestive heart failure!

Fortunately for us here in North Carolina, our principal threat from assassin bugs and politicians is their parasitic feeding on our blood and their assault on our dignity in #shiting on our #faces. Most bugs and politicians don't feed on foreign bodies and then us.

But from time to time, that foreign feasting occurs.

For the Orange Assassin Bug, as I said, the choices are raccoons and opossums.

For the politician, the foreign bodies of choice are truly revolting: communist dictatorships of either the Soviet or Chinese strain, or socialist democracies of the Venezuelan or European strains.

While the risk of harm still remains small, as bugs and politicians use adaptive techniques that minimize contact with humans, the harm threatened when a politician is full of #shit acquired from feasting on such foreign ideologies is truly grotesque.

Exposure to the higher harms can vary from mild symptoms of swollen bite sites, as on the left. Or truly grotesque destructions, as shown on the right.

In political terms, the image on the right shows the consequence of a mild exposure to the mere bite of the politician or the bug. The image on the right shows the consequences of being bitten by a bug or politician infected with socialist or communist ideology.

@threadreaderapp unroll