Many of the countries hit by unrest have explicitly accepted rising inequality as a price worth paying for rapid economic growth. In China, Deng Xiaoping set the stage for the Communist party’s embrace of capitalism decades ago when he announced – “To get rich is glorious.” In Britain, Peter Mandelson, architect of Tony Blair’s New Labour, pronounced himself “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. Chile was the pioneer of free-market reforms in Latin America. In India, an economic boom has seen billionaires’ mansions （公馆，宅第）constructed near abject slums（毗连的平民窟）

.

And yet many of these same countries also have strong egalitarian political traditions that still strike a popular chord. Mr Hazare has consciously aped（模仿） the methods and language of Mahatma Gandhi. Many of Israel’s demonstrators decry （谴责）the free-market policies of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and speak nostalgically（怀旧的）of the socialist traditions of the kibbutz movement. The indignados of Madrid, Athens and Paris demand support for a “European social model”, which promises free education and healthcare and a decent income for all

.

It is tempting to see all these upheavals as linked by a globalisation that boosted the incomes of the wealthy, while creating an international labour market that holds down the wages of the unskilled, at least in the west. Globalisation has also fostered the communications networks that allow ideas and images of revolt to skip around the world

.

However, the creation of a global mood is a mysterious thing. In 1968, before the word “globalisation” or the internet were even invented, there were student rebellions around the world. The year 1989 saw not just the fall of the Berlin wall, but the Tiananmen Square protests in China. Perhaps 2011 will come to rank alongside 1968 and 1989 as a year of global revolt?

。

And yet there is one striking exception to this pattern – the US. America exhibits many of the social and economic trends that have got people out on the streets in other countries: rising inequality, a threat to middle-class living standards, anger against the political and business elite. Yet, so far, all this rage – whether on the left or the Tea Party（茶党） right – has been expressed in the media or at the ballot box, but not by disorder on the streets

.

Some argue that ordinary Americans are suffering from a form of false consciousness in which anger about economic issues gets misdirected into rage about guns or religion. But that is too patronising（爱装逼的意思）. America’s political culture has always been more individualistic and less egalitarian than that of other nations. And while there are huge rewards for the successful in the US, there is a belief that malefactors will be punished. Some may recoil（退缩，害怕） at the spectacle of executives forced to do the “perp walk” or presidents impeached for their sexual peccadilloes（轻罪）. But it sends a message that nobody is above the law and that corruption will not be tolerated

.

President Barack Obama has been accused of not believing in “American exceptionalism”. But this is one of form of American exception he has reason to be grateful for.