2. Regression. A liking for the garden gnome and for pinball, for skittles, disco, horoscopes, and Suzuki is not, as the enlighteners believe, willful ignorance or the systematic stupefacation of defenseless masses. No historic lag is crying out to be made up. It's the poor victims of manipulation who are silently but energetically refusing every kind of instruction. Not for any price do they want to be raised to a higher level of culture, of taste, of political consciousness, that is, to where the particular spokesman of the day is standing.
The majority doesn't turn away to superstition, sport, and entertainment by mistake, because it doesn't know any better; it does so quite intentionally. Escapism is a well-defined strategy. The illusory is systematically and deliberately sought out. Regression is a staple food. A tabloid newspaper is indispensable because it is meaningless, not despite being so; for the important things we call history have always confronted us, in our capacity as majority, in only one form; as impositions.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger, In Defense of Normality, Zig Zag, The Politics of Culture and Vice Versa, The New Press, NY, 1997, pg. 301
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