NorthHawk wrote:I'm not sure that the pressure of the pandemic caused it as much as it's an opportunity for those extremists to do the evil they do.
They are always looking for a cause and if it wasn't the pandemic, it would be something else, in this case probably the so called stolen election.
I disagree. IMO the pandemic is a major factor in the civil unrest we've been seeing since the pandemic started. Here's a good article that has some historical evidence of how past pandemics contributed to civil unrest:
“So when our Sickness, and our Poverty Had greater wants than we could well supply; Strict Orders did but more enrage our grief, And hinder in accomplishing relief.”
That’s how the British poet George Wither explained a spreading rebellion against social-distancing rules. Seeing quarantines and lockdowns as unfair and tyrannical punishments, people were taking to the streets. The year was 1625, the place was London, the disease was plague.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... st-to-come
What we're seeing is a perfect storm: A president that keeps pushing wild conspiracy theories about stolen elections combining with the pandemic and associated shut downs and the "new normal" of mask wearing, social distancing, and business closures.