ACTUALLY, I’M PRETTY SURE THERE ARE SOME PRECEDENTS: Photos show Paris streets erupting in protest and ‘extreme and unprecedented violence.’

Also: Macron Bails On Climate Summit As France Melts Down.

Plus, thoughts from Richard Fernandez:

UPDATE: The Real Significance of the French Tax Revolt.

Yet none should doubt the long-seething precursor to this conflagration despite the impossibility of capturing winnowed domestic budgets and severe fiscal hardship on film. Furor arising over a life circumscribed by bad luck or adverse conditions is considerable; that which results from unquestionable bureaucratic decrees is ultimately incendiary.

The public reaction to the incremental repression of life’s expression by state coercion at a certain point becomes immediate and visceral. It is playing itself out in the streets of Paris right now.

Consider the larger stakes here. For more than 100 years, European governments have built their invasive states, with the public sector controlling ever more of life. The promise of combining security and prosperity through state enhancement has failed to achieve its promise. And what does the political class propose? More government power, this time in the name of green energy.

That’s their solution to everything. If they ever propose lowering taxes and firing bureaucrats in response to some announced crisis, I’ll believe they’re serious. . . .