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Anyone watching any of this endless protest? feels like they are near the breaking point there.

I thought it would end after they agreed not to do the gas tax but its still going. farmers out in the streets with yellow vests

(https://www.mcclatchy-wires.com/incoming/24iq5f/picture222485935/alternates/FREE_480/APTPOPIX_France_Gas_Price_Protests_56077.jpg)

they are there right now too, I'm seeing on my feed

The French have many legitimate complaints. What I heard over and over there is the government has no connection to the people.

Actually I have nothing against riots as long as rioters get permits, stay polite, they're after business and school hours, no laws are broken, it's carried out in someone else's neighborhood, and they clean up after themselves when they wrap things up before dark.

This is not unusual behaviour for the French. As a country, they've been suffering a lot in the past decade. Terrorist attacks, losing their AAA credit rating early on in the last big financial crash (thus making the national debt more expensive), high unemployment (especially in the north of France which I'll mention again shortly), and various other problems.

Macron has been threatening to block French ports from shipping goods to the UK once Brexit kicks in if he doesn't get his way on various things. This means the transportation of these goods will simply which to other northern European ports (Belgium and Denmark I would imagine), and a region of France that is already suffering from high unemployment will only suffer more (yes, a French president has actually managed to turn French people against him by attacking the UK. Who would have thought that would ever be a thing?).

To be honest, the French find something to riot about every few years. When they aren't rioting they are going on strike, to the point where when I am travelling to the US, I take a slightly longer route now and fly via Amsterdam rather than risk going through Paris. Plus CDG sucks like no other international airport I have had the misfortune to spend time in. For national airports though, so far Luton takes the award for being the worst.

dislike of Macron himself seems to be a real factor

Sometimes I think our expectations have things reversed, and instead of moving toward a future of global human unification, we're actually seeing the stirrings of a greater fragmentation into microstates and regionalism, with these riots being as much about anger at a vast central government as they are about that government's policies.

The French people I've spoken to have mostly complained about taxes. Macron in an effort to attract wealthy people away from the UK has lowered taxes on the rich, but to compensate increased other taxes which have affected poor people more (like the fuel tax). None of them has mentioned anger against the regime itself as such. It is more directed directly at a president who has made himself increasingly unpopular, and they are looking for an election rather than a revolution. It is in the nature of democracies to become increasingly complex and hidebound in red tape the longer they exist.

The bureaucracy will always expand to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. Plus it is difficult for the human species to co-operate at any level above the tribal. Amazing really that we have managed to found lasting states.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dt5e-1TXQAExIgD.jpg)

It needs to happen here.

(http://i.imgur.com/5l2iXyH.jpg)