Paris doesn't look like a mess, be assured. People's life is mostly going on perfectly normally, demonstrations are localised and protected bar the occasional problem (usually surrounding high school students demonstrations) but to be honest, while the media love them, the sum of all these problems are undoubtedly less than any kids fights you would get on any regular day in a medium US or British town.

General strikes are planned in advance and the days of strikes are published in advance. This is why on this forum you got early information of the impact of the 12 October strike, then of the 19 October strike (today), etc. The only continuous disruptions regard a small proportion of train and underground operations but this really results in slightly lower frequencies rather than outright nightmare.

And as far as I know, no flight has been cancelled because of fuel shortage - the only issue is that some flights are having a refuelling stop (not nearly all of them, I think it concerned a total of 20 flights today out of a total of several hundreds) to avoid over-burdening CDG. If your flight is scheduled for one such refuelling stop, AF will contact you to tell you about the new timing.

On the day when you fly, if you want, you could ask the cabin crew if it is a strike day or not, and if you head to the RER station, you'll see immediately whether the traffic CDG-Paris is normal or reduced because they will indicate all next trains etc.

My personal advice about not going had little to do with the risk of strike in a way, I just hate rushing and I think that 5 hours doesn't give much time to enjoy Paris, but if you arrive early, etc, you can take a last minute decision.

I find the duty free shops at CDG very poor personally, but you could buy some nice spirits - for instance a good cognac, and I think 2E also has a shop where they sell cheese and other food goods. And of course, clothes or bags by top French designers if you feel in an expensive mood!