Emma Goldman Quote on Human Attention and Sorrow

"Give the people a toy to keep them busy long enough, give them 'political parties'! Then they will waste all their energy and wit on meaningless occupation with individuals and other trivialities. So they won't bother us anymore, and we can run our business at will. But to keep the toy from getting boring eventually and the population's discontent from boiling over, a ritual game with a cathartic function as a pressure valve must be inserted at regular intervals. We call it "parliamentary elections," which sounds important. Then there is peace for the next four years, especially since everyone believes they decided something themselves. The media? They play our game all by themselves—without realizing it. Occasionally we give them a morsel when we want to functionally neutralize a somewhat more alert, and thus unwelcome, person or group. Then they are satisfied, and so is the population; after all, they have something to gossip about. By splitting the voters through the political party system, we can get them to expend their energy fighting for battles over issues of no importance." Montagu Norman