I wonder if the pandemic lockdown lifers are the closeted BDSM types finally letting a version of their freak flag fly in public? You know, those who would like to be tied up in one place and voluntarily abused?

Right now, during the pandemic is their first real chance to to inflict that on the rest of us. OK, I am kind of joking. Mostly. It wouldn’t be people in the actual BDSM community. Most of them are all about consent. It’d be people who would never let themselves do such “bad” things as actual BDSM, though they feel the draw, but have to get there another way — and that way is inflicting their control fantasies on the rest of us.

That has to be the explanation for at least some of the “blue state scoldy people,” to steal Angie Schmitt’s great phrase.