Bread & Circuses.
That is such a tired trope – give the Plebs this (defined in oh so many ways) and they won’t talk (or think) about that. It is a cliché. But you should always remember why clichés become cliches, they owe their continuing lives to the fact that they are perceived to be real, or real enough to be believed in by enough people to make them ‘work’.
Distractions and deflections have changed over the years since emperors provided extravagant displays of gladiators in the arena and made sure that there was enough bread to go around to ensure that a potentially dangerous population wasn’t driven to action against the powers-that-be by hunger.
Drugs work too. The Opium Dens mentioned in the writings of Conan Doyle in the stories of Sherlock Holmes (though he was more a morphine man) were legal. The soporific drugged forms laid out on beds, were oblivious to the horrors of their everyday lives. Opium was a way of forgetting, of finding an escape, however momentary, from a life that was hard.
Today, those circuses are electronic, on tablets, computers and above all on mobile phones. In the vast chattering of the electronic world there is always a niche for you however bizarre or specialized your own particular taste. Sheer volume ensures that you are not alone and your anger and frustration and rage are all catered for somewhere in the reels and videos and blogs that fall over themselves to claim your attention.
Meanwhile real life goes on, with the power structures that have ruled this planet for millennia being virtually untouched by increased (apparent) transparency and by ‘everyone having the opportunity to voice their opinions world-wide.’
In the news today it has been announced that Meta will pay up to $17bn and make “sweeping changes” to Instagram and Facebook to settle a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of 29 US states, who accused it of knowingly damaging young people’s wellbeing with its platforms.
Both sides have reached a settlement where Meta has not admitted wrongdoing.
What I find astonishing is that Meta can consider a settlement of $17bn and be able to carry on, and not be bankrupt by such punitive damages. They might “change”, but they will carry on carrying on. People will continue using their products and the situation will be roughly the same as it was before. People will not be asking how a company can pay out so much and still carry on. As long as they have what they think they want, then who really cares!
But the most glaringly inept use of “bread & circuses” as deflection is surely still in the stunted hands of the lying sex pest of the White House.
The political right has had extensive experience of using circuses to fill the attention of their followers and deflect questioning of what is actually going on. For years the right has used homosexuality and abortion to act as blinkers from more balanced observation of the political scene. Difficult questions can be deflected by some cheap emotional appeal about fears for the “safety of children, threatened by perverted monsters” – using a facile link from child abuse to homosexuality. Forget for a moment the Epstein Files and who is mentioned more than 30k times in them! Similarly with abortion. The Question of Abortion has been carefully nurtured by the fundamentalist right wing as a key moral black-&-white question about the sanctity of Human Life: do you believe in killing people or not! The emptiness of that concern for the unborn child is apparent when, for those on the right, concern for the ‘child’ lasts as long as it is in the womb, as soon as it is born, concern for mother and child ceases. But no one can deny the appeal of both ‘causes’ and the right can look to considerable successes not only in the USA, but also around the world that strengthens their positions.
But Trumps use of circuses is inept. The renaming of The Gulf of Mexico and The JFK Centre for the performing arts; the threat to rename Lake Ontario and to demolish the JFK Centre; the holding of fights and car races; the destruction of the East Wing; the whole tariff debacle; the Trump Arch, the fiasco of The Reflecting Pool. People do respond with fury to the unthinking, unfeeling and unhinged way that Trump highlights ideas and events and it is easy to be distracted in the idiocy of his presidency, and to miss what Trump is actually doing: destroying the democratic basis of the country that he so mealy mouthily professes to love.
History shows us all too clearly where quasi-dictators like Trump, with a fanatical cult-like base of supporters, will end up. The picture is not pretty.
A catchphrase from an 80s Wendy’s advert in the States comes to mind when trying to navigate through all the faff from a deeply unserious President. Forget the circuses, “Where’s the beef!” Concentrate on the important stuff, or the trivia will destroy us.
