I’ve started rereading all of the Travis McGee books by John D. MacDonald. Besides being a hero McGee is quite the philosopher.

New York is where it is going to begin, I think. You can see it coming. The insect experts have learned how it works with locusts. Until locust population reaches a certain density, they all act like any grasshoppers. When the critical point is reached, they turn savage and swarm, and try to eat the world. We’re nearing a critical point. One day soon two strangers will bump into each other at high noon in the middle of New York. But this time they won’t snarl and go on. They will stop and stare and then leap at each others’ throats in a dreadful silence. The infection will spread outward from that point. Old ladies will crack skulls with their deadly handbags. Cars will plunge down the crowded sidewalks. Drivers will be torn out of their cars and stomped. It will spread to all of the huge cities of the world, and by dawn ot the next day there will be a horrid silence of sprawled bodies and tumbled vehicles, gutted buildings and a few wisps of smoke. And through the silence will prowl a few, a very few of the most powerful ones, ragged and bloody, slowly tracking each other down. – Travis McGee from Nightmare in Pink

This was written way back in 1964.

The thing with locusts is the same with rats. If you put them in close quarters they go insane. Many of them turn queer.

That’s what we are seeing in our large cities. The people are going insane. They are electing idiots like Lori Lightweight, Bill DeBlasio, Ted Wheeler, Jacob Frey, and other big city mayors who are destroying their cities.

They’re electing people like the city council of Minneapolis who want to disband the police department.

WTF is wrong with these people? They’re insane. So are the people who elect them. That’s the only thing that makes sense.

The people of Cook County are about to reelect Kim Foxx who is releasing criminals without charging them. That’s insanity.

Here’s another insane idea. No bail. Why? Because it discriminates against poor people. So let’s let a violent crook out of jail without posting bail because he’s poor? Insanity.

Here’s another insane idea. Don’t go after shoplifters if they steal less than $1000. So now the looters know that as long as they steal less than $1000 they’re OK.

I wonder what MacDonald would have Travis McGee say about the current insanity going on in this country?