Here's a delicate question. To what extent was the Black Lives Matter movement a product of the lockdown? How much did the statue-smashing and looting owe to anti-racism, and how much to the fact that people had been cooped up at home for months?

I say “a delicate question” because, although lots of people have been asking it privately, politicians and commentators are reluctant to air it in public. In the demented atmosphere that has prevailed since last summer, any statement short of full support for the protesters risks being misconstrued. Corporations, sports leagues, celebrities, police chiefs — all have dropped to their knees before BLM, sometimes literally. Even to wonder aloud whether keeping people off work and out of school might have incubated a hysterical mood is to invite the accusation that you are somehow trivializing the monstrous death of George Floyd.