"As political power has been centralized, the issues professionalized and compromised by the two-party state, a sort of impersonal manipulation has replaced authority. For authority, there is a need of justifications in order to secure loyalties; for manipulation, there is exercise of power without explicit justifications, for decisions are hidden. Manipulation, as we have suggested, arises when there is a centralization of power that is not publicly justified and those who have it don't believe they could justify it. Manipulation feeds upon and is fed by mass indifference. For in the narrowed range of assertion and counter-assertion no target of demand, no symbols or principles are argued over and debated in public. . . And so insecurity and striving are not attached to political symbols but are drained off by the distractions of amusement, the frenzied search for commodities, or turned in upon the self as busy little frustrations. There is no organized effort to develop common consciousness of common interests, and men feel distanced from events without the power to order them" (White Collar: The American Middle Classes, 1951, pp. 349-350).