Dear Reader (including the heroic editors of The New York Times who bravely refused to take responsibility for publishing a triggering op-ed by a sitting senator and boldly opted instead to throw one of their own junior editors to the mob),

I’ll be straight with you, I’m too angry for much jocularity today. So, let’s just get started. 

We spent the last couple of months being hectored by public health experts and earnestly righteous media personalities who insisted that easing lockdown policies was immoral, that refusing to social distance or wear masks was nigh upon murderous. They even suggested that protests were somehow profane. But now that the George Floyd protests are serving as some kind of Great Awokening, many of the same are saying “never mind” about all of that. Protests aren’t profane, they’re glorious and essential—if they agree with what you’re protesting about.