Votes for “bread and circuses”?

We wander among the ancient ruins of Bet She'an, an influential city located at the junction between the Jordan River valley and Jezreel valley in northern Israel. I imagine life in this bustling metropolis, one of the leading cities of the Decapolis, a loose foundation of 10 cities that were the centers of Greco-Roman culture during the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

We wander among the ancient ruins of Bet She'an, an influential city located at the junction between the Jordan River valley and Jezreel valley in northern Israel. I imagine life in this bustling metropolis, one of the leading cities of the Decapolis, a loose foundation of 10 cities that were the centers of Greco-Roman culture during the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

      We rest in the stone seats of the huge theater, the best preserved today, a vast marble stage sprawling before us. Our Israeli guide explains the purpose of the stage: bread and circuses (panem et circenses). I 've heard the words before but what do they mean? The two words are a metaphor that represent Rome's ultimate attempt to control its populace, using more and more excesses of free food and entertainment. This strategy was designed to appease its restless citizens through diversion, distraction, and satisfying immediate base needs. Instead of inspiring the people with sound public policy and service, Rome enticed its men particularly into the arenas and theaters each day with more and more extreme forms of explicit sexual deviancy, public rapes, and finally live murders. This climaxed in the gladiator games and the killing of Christians by ferocious beasts. From his soapbox, our Israeli guide preached like an evangelical pastor: once a nation reverts to these kinds of devices to exercise power over its people, it's only a matter of time until that nation implodes, not from external enemies, but from within. I had heard this idea in school before but to sit in the theater where these atrocities took place every day, well…
      A first century Roman satirist and poet Juvenal wrote: Already long ago, from when  we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions—everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.                                                                                                          (Satire 10.77–81)
      To him the phrase bread and circuses identified the only remaining cares of a new Roman populace who no longer valued their historical birthright that included their political and civic involvement, no longer valued the nobility and grandeur that once was Rome. Instead they were content with cheap fixes, bread and circuses. Juvenal expressed contempt for what he saw and wrote against it. His writings included the account of how Roman politicians devised a plan in 140 B.C. to win the votes of the new citizens by giving out cheap food and entertainment as most effective way to maintain power, yes, bread and circuses again.
      Suzanne Collins references the phrase bread and circuses in her Trilogy The Hunger Games and names her fictional nation Panem, a place where children are forced to kill other children for the entertainment of the elite. First century Juvenal and twenty-first century Collins–a pair of writers with similar messages? How interesting!
      As I sat in that stone-cold seat on a hot summer day looking onto that Roman stage, racing through my mind were these questions: What are today's bread and circuses? Who is selling votes today for bread and circuses? and where is this thinking taking our nation and our children? Can this roaring locomotive be stopped and if so, how?