Richard Hofstadter

“[T]he growth of the mass media of communication and their use in politics have brought politics closer to the people than ever before and have made politics a form of entertainment in which the spectators feel themselves involved. Thus it has become, more than ever before, an arena into which private emotions and personal problems can be readily projected. Mass communications have made it possible to keep the mass man in an almost constant state of political mobilisation.”

-- Richard Hofstadter

But it seems more like misdirection. Everyone gets excited by all the hot-button issues - abortion, a military strike, a missing plane, a police beating. But it's all beside the point, the main power, the central injustice. We are sheep being made to bleat about this and that, while they shear and eat us.