Paying Attention

         Robert Bellah's Democracy Means Paying Attention discusses the importance of citizens paying attention and being aware of what is going on in their democracy.  If citizens are unaware of the issues in their democracy, it is hard to make the democracy function properly; they need to pay attention to the important matters.  Bellah writes, "One way of defining democracy would be to call it a political system in which people actively attend to what is significant" (273).
          Has America's attention to democracy decreased over the years?  From what we've been discussing in class about how less people vote, less people inform themselves about the candidates, and less people participate in voluntary associations, the answer seems to be yes.  Does this make America a bad society?  Is America not as "good" of a nation as it was in the 1800s when De Tocqueville visited?  Bellah discusses these questions when he writes, "It is doubtful whether attention has priority in America today.  Much of our current politics seems to be designed to distract us from what is important and seduce us into fantasies that all is well.  Worse, these politics offer solutions that only increase our distraction...Attending means to concern ourselves with the larger meaning of things in the longer run, rather than with short-term payoffs.  The pursuit of immediate pleasure, or the promise of immediate pleasure, is the essence of distraction.  A good society is one in which attention takes precedence over distraction" (273).