The problem with relying on bread and circuses to keep the populace pacified is you need to actually provide the circuses and lower the price of bread.
@davidaugust Oh, we've got the circus, no doubt about that. Bread is one of those socialist plots, however.
@davidaugust Yes. The evidence so far is leaning towards an anti-bread & anti-circus regime.
@davidaugust I've got too much circus on more displays than I can look at, while SnapChat & Youtube were the kid's bailiwick limited to an hour per day. I looked at TikTok back when it was a music writing/sharing when there were still fewer than 20K apps on Android Market.
Get this, though: my grocery bill is the same as it was then. That was 2012. Raspberries are still $3.89; the cheap bread is still $1.49.
GW raised my butter 600%---the dairy farmers bitched. You probably don't remember....
They've shot the elephants, they've hanged the clowns, the lions are a smouldering mess and the three-ring circus is now approximately three quarters of a sagitta and shrinking fast.
Oh, and all we've got for panem is compressed day-old popcorn.
> The problem with relying on bread and circuses to keep the populace pacified
I'm not sure that pacification is one of @breadandcircuses's goals here. He's more likely to stuff tinder betwixt your toes. 
Not exactly...you merely need to get the populace to believe you've provided and achieved those things.
See 1984 by Orwell.
See the Republican Party for the past thirty to forty years.
@setsly fair. Seems the actual or perceptual realities both aren’t happening.