When the lid pops off.

There is, the the zeitgeist now, a sense of history repeating itself.

1968 comes to mind:  the streets of Paris filled with student and workers.  Students taking turns sitting in the dean’s chair at Occupied Columbia University.  The August-heat chaos in the streets of Chicago.

And now, today.  Dictator in the Middle East is not a position with a lot of job security.  Students, of a sort — maybe it’s former students with current student loans — are assembling in cities all over the world with a host of accessory characters.  Even celebrities.  (Which is never a good sign for a protest movement.)

As someone said on a radio talk show yesterday:  what took them so long?

That’s something that has crossed my mind as well.  But the thought has always been blunted by this:  I am seeing this from a different perspective.  I am an old man now.

As an old man, I get to say things like this:  I don’t think history repeats itself.  Similarities between today and 1968?  Absolutely.

But differences as well.  The most obvious one is that money has much, much more power than it did forty years ago.

History is more like a boiling stew on the stove.  Eventually, the lid pops off and steam is released.

How much steam?

Who knows.  But it will not be the same reaction as before.  It’s a different stew.