Voters are basically lazy, basically uninterested in making an effort to understand what we’re talking about… reason requires a higher degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier… reason pushes the viewer back, it assaults him, it demands that he agree or disagree; impression can envelop him, invite him in, without making an intellectual demand… . When we argue with him we demand that he make the effort of replying. We seek to engage his intellect, and for most people this is the most difficult work of all. The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable. — Nixon adviser William Gavin
The average American doesn’t want to be educated; he doesn’t want to improve his mind; he doesn’t even want to work, consciously, at being a good citizen, — Clem Whitaker, co-founder of political advertising industry in the US in the early 1930s.
A wall goes up when you try to make Mr. and Mrs. Average American Citizen work or think.

Clem Whitaker, one of the first modern American political consultants.

Is it true? Has the internet changed this phenomenon? Is that the American citizen of the past? Have we spent too long pandering to the American citizen’s most base desires rather than uplifting conversation?