tyresias | My political cynism goes a lot further than I lead on.

Do people demand a really just system? Well, we'll arrange it so that they'll be satisfied with one that's a little less unjust. The workers cry out, "let's put an end to this shameful, animal exploitation" - and we'll see to it mainly that they don't feel ashamed anymore, as long as they keep on being exploited. They would like not to get killed in the factory any longer, so we'll install a few more protectice devices, raise the survivor's benefits a little more. They want to see class society eliminated - and we'll work things out so that class differences aren't so huge; or rather, they won't be so visible! They want a revolution, and we'll give them reforms -lots of reforms; we'll drown them in reforms. Or rather, we'll drown them with promises of reforms, because we'll never give them real ones, either!! [...]
scandals are the fertilizer of Western democracy. Let me say more. Scandal is the antidote to an even worse poison: namely, people's gaining political consciousness. If people become too conscious we are screwed. For example, has the American government, a real democracy, ever imposed any censorship to keep people from finging out about the murder of all the leaders of the black movement, or the massacre of thousands of helpless Vietnamese? Not at all. They don't even hide the fact that they've manufactured enough nerve gas to destroy the population of the world ten times over. They don't censor these scandals. And rightly so. Because in this way people have the possibility of becoming indignant. Horrified. 'What kind of government is this? Disgusting generals. Assassins.' And they become indignant. And out of the indignation comes a burp. A liberating burp. It's like Alka-Seltzer. But nothing changes.
-exerpts from Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo (written in 1984)