Do you remember when police and municipal officials were advising all of the businesses in their cities to board up their shops in anticipation of all of the looting and violence that would break out if Donald Trump won the election? Well, at least in the nation’s capital it appears that the crisis has passed. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has sent out a notice asking all of the businesses to begin taking down the plywood coverings nailed to their windows. Apparently, the declaration that Joe Biden will be the next president has solved all of our problems with social unrest and everyone can just go about their business as usual. (Well… except for the places that are shut down because of the pandemic, of course.) So I guess all is right with the world once again, right? Bear with me here, because I smell a rat and I think many of you will also. (Free Beacon)

Washington, D.C., officials are asking shopkeepers to remove plywood boards protecting their stores, claiming that “no credible threats of violence” exist despite left-wing groups’ planned post-election demonstrations.

Businesses and government agencies in the nation’s capital, dozens of which were damaged during anti-police protests this summer, boarded up windows and entryways in preparation for potentially violent post-election protests.

On Saturday, the Associated Press declared Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden the election’s winner, leading D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s (D.) administration to make the request.

The director of the District’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency is quoted as saying that local businesses “should not be fearful of” another wave of riots and looting. City administration officials are echoing that sentiment, and thus far they seem to be correct. Local anti-police group #ShutDownDC had planned a huge protest near the White House for Saturday in conjunction with the local Black Lives Matter group. That didn’t happen, and the District was largely peaceful aside from some Biden victory celebrations.

At this point, we should be asking ourselves why the nearly daily riots have suddenly tapered off. And even more to the point, why would city officials be so confident in terms of predicting a cessation of the violence and property damage? Let’s consider the following.

Joe Biden isn’t in office yet and even if all of Donald Trump’s court challenges fail, Biden won’t be sworn in for more than two months. Even more to the point, the underlying driver of all of these riots was supposedly the alleged widespread wave of police killing allegedly innocent Black people. What’s changed? There are still no charges against the cops that shot Bronna Taylor. The George Floyd and Daniel Prude cases haven’t moved forward significantly. Efforts at defunding or abolishing the police have largely stalled around the nation. So what’s changed? In reality, almost nothing.

If all of those issues that were driving the riots are still hanging out there in the public square, why would the unrest suddenly grind to a halt on the day that the media declared Joe Biden the winner of the election? And more to the point, how would the municipal officials who were supposedly the targets of all of these protests know that the coast is clear and their local businesses can safely reopen?

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but this all sounds rather unlikely. It’s almost as if there was some sort of massive national display of violence and unrest designed to characterize the Trump presidency as a period of chaos and turmoil, perhaps scaring some people into voting for Biden. And now that Trump is perceived to be on the way out, the need for the riots has evaporated. Maybe not. They may kick back into gear at some point, but this just strikes me as more than could be easily written off as coincidence. We all know that those riots were driven by liberals and progressives, mixed in with a collection of anarchists and opportunistic gang members. Electing Joe Biden didn’t somehow resolve all of their complaints in an instant. I’d like to hear Mayor Bowser’s thoughts on the subject.