Thank you for this, it's a perspective I hadn't seen before, but it does ring true for me (less in motive, more in circumstance-- I don't believe it to be such a conscious method of subduing the masses so much as simply something that came as the baggage to a positive ideal).

I've been dying to ask how our political circus is being presented in other countries, both English-speaking and not. Apparently it's hot stuff in Australia, what do you see there in Britain?