Not this week.

The internet lit up as bloggers by the thousands copied news articles, posted photos, and made observations and interpretations of events in Hong Kong.

You could call it the "flaming" aftermath of the torch.

The deportation of potential protesters, the detention of actual protesters, actress Mia Farrow's high profile Darfur-related visit, and near-violence against protesters among nationalistic flag-waving onlookers dominated. Some defended the protesters, some denounced them and a few wanted the Olympics and politics considered as unrelated.

Oh for the halcyon days of political apathy.

Those were when? Not in the 1960s or 1970s, which saw months of riots and protests, as well as strikes and the birth of a student movement.

The 1980s hardly qualifies, with collapse of confidence in the dollar shored up only by a drastic imposition of a currency board and peg. Repeated rocky times in negotiations on returning the territory to China sparked that.

Nor 1986 when a million petitioners signed protests over Daya Bay nuclear power plant construction. And not in 1987 when government manipulation of consultation results from the Green Paper on constitutional reforms triggered the formation of groups that sowed the seeds of today's political parties and activists.

Certainly not in 1989.

The groups formed in the 1970s and 1980s showed their strength in 1989 when more than a million twice paraded en masse in support of students protesting in Beijing. The early 1990s reaction to 1989's awful events saw hundreds of thousands flee Hong Kong either to stay overseas or get passports, and hundreds of thousands more participate in elections in which pro-democracy activists won overwhelmingly.

Hardly apathetic reactions.

Even after 1997 the 1998 election saw a record turnout and democrats return in large numbers, despite rules deliberately skewed against them. The only time in recent decades the myth of political apathy was possibly true was between 1999 and 2002.

And that proved the calm before a very big storm.

But Hong Kongers are considered civil by most visitors, even if the still- frequent allegations of political apathy are more propaganda than reality. A bit pushy, maybe rude at times, but nevertheless orderly and tolerant. So when the crowds turned near-violent against protesters last week, many local expats and visitors were shocked and even, according to a few of the e-mails I received, frightened.

Could Hong Kongers turn violent, they asked. Has flag-waving, Cultural Revolution-style nationalistic intolerance of differing views and foreign influence arrived in Hong Kong?

Quite a few bloggers blamed the uncivil behavior of the red-draped mob on visiting mainlanders, not local Hong Kongers. The giveaway, onsite participants alleged, was hearing Putonghua and the stench of stale tobacco.

There's no reason to believe Hong Kong has lost the rule of law or that it is turning into a 21st-century version of post-1949 Shanghai, trying to prove its communist loyalty by excessive purity and fanaticism.

Red shirts do not mean Maoist Red Thought.

While I strongly oppose the government summarily refusing entry to people here to protest peacefully, comparing things with the Cultural Revolution, or even protests elsewhere, goes a bit far.

Nobody burned down or smashed up a McDonald's or Starbucks like they did in Seattle in 1998. French restaurants still stand, and nobody has called for naming them "freedom" restaurants like Americans renamed their French fries as freedom fries in 2003.

Nobody was killed, seriously injured or beaten to a pulp.

One other related item of note. My comparison of Tibet with Hawaii in this column two weeks ago no longer stands alone.

Jonathan Dresner in "Is Hawaii a colony that needs to be freed?" published May 5 on the History News Network also makes the link.

He was replying to an open letter to the American progressive movement from the Hawaiian independence movement published April 28 in US journal The Nation.

When the US frees Hawaii, then I'll start waving the Tibetan flag. After all, they're made next door in Guangdong.

And while Farrow is right about China and Darfur, describing the torch relay crowds as a violent mob is wrong.