I don't think it's just the political side of things where the question needs to be asked. Raising three young ladies and interacting with the youth here, particularly males, I see a lot of unnecessary destruction of things just because "it's cool". We've had a couple of parties in our house with our oldest and I had to finally ban most of her male classmates because they go wild and destroy things. Now that she's in university she runs with calmer people - but they're mostly foreigners. She has almost no male Argentine friends, though she has maintained friendship with her female Argentine friends, who are much more calm than their male counterparts. In fact, she has a Colombian boyfriend, most of her male friends are Colombian and Peruvian (whom she met at university) and she doesn't really like being around young Argentine males at all because of how they behave.
There was a party last night in the apartment above us. A mother with two kids, one of them about 19 or 20, live there. The mother and the younger one go somewhere for the weekend fairly often and the older one stays and has parties. Until about 5:30 in the morning this morning, young Argentine males screaming at the tops of their lungs, jumping up and down on the floor, and you can hear things crashing and breaking. It's not uncommon that the police come at some point, although about 4:00 am, this time, things calmed down this and no police came.
I have friends who own a quite famous bar here in town with two locations in Recoleta and Palermo. The Palermo location has a rooftop open patio. They've had to install metal fencing up about three meters above the parapet walls (which are already about 2-3 meters high) because the guys get drunk and start throwing chairs and other stuff off the roof. They've had to replace sinks in their bathrooms (usually the always the men's) constantly because they get shattered by whatever the guys do in the bathroom.
I could go on and on. But it seems like the last 8-10 years or so, according to many Argentinos with whom I've conversed, things have gotten worse and worse than they ever were in their memories as far as the lack of respect shown by younger folk.
To me, it comes down to a basic lack of respect for the well-being and property of others and an overwhelming sense of selfishness that allows people to think they have a right to do whatever they want, as well as a lack of consequences for anything they do. It manifests itself in many ways throughout the society, at least here in CABA and its environs, both in the political area and personal.
It is becoming cultural, and not just for protests.
