The French have a talent for riot, public protest, and street-based insurrection.* The current mayhem in Paris has been escalating every weekend since starting in mid-November.
Why weekends? This is a working-person revolt.
“Rioters ran amok across central Paris on Saturday, torching cars and buildings, looting shops, smashing windows and clashing with police in the worst unrest in more than a decade, posing a dire challenge to Emmanuel Macron’s presidency,” Yahoo News informs us. “The authorities were caught off guard by the escalation in violence after two weeks of nationwide protests against fuel taxes and living costs…”
Yes, this is a tax revolt.
You see, the taxes are part of a carbon emissions reduction program — the kind of taxes that Democrats are eager to put into place in America. Leftists and environmentalists worldwide should pay special attention.
The gambit, of course, is this: cityfolk tend not to mind such taxes less because they do not take the hit immediately. People outside cities, on the other hand, drive everywhere, often for their jobs. In Paris, well, not so much. The city has even enacted an ordinance to outlaw all but electric automobiles by 2030.
It’s called the “yellow vests [jackets] movement” to symbolize the government’s anti-driver mindset: “all motorists had been required by law — since 2008 — to have high-visibility vests in their vehicles when driving.”
Sure, push around ordinary motorists.
The protest movement has been largely made up of these people, since many businesses and professionals get exemptions from the taxes.
It’s a class war thing. You might think Macron and other elitists in government would understand their own country.
But no.
So, why?
It’s a big government thing.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Maybe that is why the street violence of “refugees” and children of Middle-Eastern and North African migrants have been taken with as much tolerance as it has been: the rioters have seemed so very French.
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