The more things change...

In reading the paragraphs below, I stopped and wondered what the author would have thought of today's use of communication in politics.  This is from The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter and this particular essay was written in 1954, titled Pseudo-Conservatism Revisited- 1954.

“The 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 mobilization.” 

“In a populistic culture like ours, which seems to lack a responsible elite with political and moral autonomy, and in which it is possible to exploit the wildest currents of public sentiment for private purposes, it is at least conceivable that a highly organized, vocal, active, and well-financed minority could create a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.”