In most circles it is hard work to sustain conversation on a political theme; and once initiated, it is quickly dismissed with a yawn.
John Dewey
The Public Record
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century.
gutenberg.org
The political elements in the constitution of the human being, those having to do with citizenship, are crowded to one side.
That they did not originate in deliberate desire to divert attention from political interests does not lessen their effectiveness in that direction.
What is significant is that access to means of amusement has been rendered easy and cheap beyond anything known in the past.
The members of an inchoate public have too many ways of enjoyment, as well as of work, to give much thought to organization into an effective public.
The increase in the number, variety and cheapness of amusements represents a powerful diversion from political concern.
Politics thus tends to become just another “business”: the especial concern of bosses and the managers of the machine.
To-day, so great and powerful is the sweep of the industrial current, the person of leisure is usually an idle person.
Aristotle could not conceive a body of citizens competent to carry on politics consisting of others than those who had leisure, that is, of those who were relieved from all other preoccupations, especially that of making a livelihood.
In countries where political life has been most successfully conducted in the past, there was a class specially set aside, as it were, who made political affairs their special business.
But now the industrial conditions which have enlarged, complicated and multiplied public interests have also multiplied and intensified formidable rivals to them.
The power of “bread and the circus” to divert attention from public matters is an old story.