Bastille

A Saturday in Paris, Place de la Bastille. Seventeen thousand people marched—that’s the police count, probably closer to the truth than the march organizers’ claim of a hundred and fifty thousand. Everyone showed up with something they wanted to hate. Catholics against abortion. People who wanted immigrants gone. People who wanted gay people to disappear. And Jews, like always, blamed for whatever feels broken when nothing else makes sense anymore.

Three million people were out of work in France. The government was spending fifty billion to try to fix it, though no one really believed that money would help. But you don’t march because of economic policy. You march when you’re scared and angry, and someone gives you permission to scream at someone else.

The march started with the Catholics in their colors leading the way. People made jokes about the Holocaust on the street like it was funny. Then FEMEN showed up—women trying to disrupt it with screaming—and the police dragged them away. The men in the crowd, these righteous marchers, called them whores and ripped their clothes off and left them on the ground.

Two hundred and fifty arrests. Twenty cops hurt. A city full of angry people, and nobody actually going anywhere.