https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/a-preview/by Andrew Stuttaford
June 8, 2020
There are ways in which the events of the last few days have made for a perfect storm: a hideous death (another hideous death) available on social media for all to see, a president who seems incapable of finding the right words and rather too capable of saying the wrong ones. And then among the consequences of COVID-19 are the measures that have thrown 40 million Americans out of work and denied millions more the opportunity to get out and about in cities where bars, restaurants, cinemas, and sometimes even parks are shut down. The political dangers of mass unemployment are well-known; the potential for disorder triggered by mass boredom, rather less so.
This is not to argue that there would have been no protests if those 40 million had jobs to go to. Nor is it to claim that there would have been no protests had people something else to do. To argue either would be to trivialize the current mood. At the same time, to deny that these factors must have contributed both to the extent of the turmoil and the destructive turn that it took would be absurd.
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