Paris in the news again

Some perspective: there are parts of Paris that are undoubtedly burning and wrecked, with millions, maybe billions, of euros in property damage. But as Tim Pool noted about the revolutionary activity in Tahrir Square when he was in Egypt during the Arab Spring: the violence probably covers just a few blocks, maybe an arrondissement or two. When these sorts of riots happen, they never take down the entire city. Not even the "summer of love" riots in US cities burned everything down. Now, that brute fact allows the gaslighters to downplay such riots' significance, to claim that what's happening isn't nearly as significant as it seems. Well, that's both right and wrong. Such violence and riots are not as significant as the literal burning-down of an entire city, but they're certainly an indication of something much deeper, societally speaking, than a mere surface irritation. So is all of Paris burning? No. But did a small-but-significant portion of Paris burn, and does this mean something? Yes.

Think of it this way: you somehow manage to get a rose's thorn wedged painfully under your fingernail. The puncture is barely a fraction of a fraction of a square centimeter—maybe only a couple square millimeters. 99.999% of your body's surface area remains unharmed. You're not going to die from the wound. You probably won't even suffer an infection. But if I were to come around and say, "Suck it up. It's not that bad," what would your reaction to me be?