As usual, life imitates satire. I thought I was kidding when I made a joke last week about how the riots in France have been very disruptive to a society that’s trying to strike. Sure enough, on Monday, the first weekday after rioting ended, came the following BBC headline: “Strike Cripples French Railways”

Ah yes, things are back to normal in France, where “as many as two-thirds of trains stopped running as commuters tried to return home on Monday night,” and car burnings are back down to the usual average of 98 a day.