Preoccupation

In all failing societies, respect for obligation and family declines along with compassion for one's fellows - to be replaced by a preoccupation with amusement, diversion, and predation. Despite a carefully calculated propaganda barrage about steadily declining crime rates in recent years, we have four times the rate of violent crime in 1than we did in 1959. Four times the number of citizens in jail. These remarkable increases in crime immediately followed the penetration of television into our culture.

--John Taylor Gatto, "Weapons Of Mass Instruction", p. 97