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Politics & Power Quote by Stanley Crouch

"Popular culture tells you that schools and parents don't know what's going on, the police are dogs, politicians are all liars and scum, and any crime that's not committed by the Mafia is done by the CIA"

About this Quote

Crouch is doing what he did best: picking a fight with the lazy satisfactions of hip skepticism. The line stacks caricature on caricature - clueless adults, pig cops, sewer-politicians, CIA-as-universal villain - not to defend any of these institutions, but to expose how pop culture packages contempt as insight. It is a satire of a posture: the reflex to treat distrust as a personality, cynicism as proof you are awake.

The intent is diagnostic. Crouch is pointing at a story engine that flatters its audience: if schools and parents are out of touch, you never have to grow up; if police are "dogs", you never have to grapple with public safety beyond anger; if politicians are irredeemable, you never have to do the work of politics. The CIA punchline lands because conspiracy thinking offers the cleanest narrative payoff: a single omnipotent culprit, no messy causality, no complicity, no boredom.

Subtextually, he is also policing the boundary between critique and self-exculpation. Pop culture can name real abuses - state violence, corruption, covert operations - but Crouch is wary of how those truths get remixed into a one-size-fits-all worldview that becomes its own kind of propaganda. He is accusing the audience of enjoying the moral thrill of opposition without the cost of evidence.

Context matters: Crouch wrote in an era when anti-establishment cool was marketable, from gangster mythology to post-Watergate paranoia to post-COINTELPRO suspicion. His provocation is that rebellion, once commodified, becomes a script - and scripts are easy to sell.

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TopicJustice
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Crouch, Stanley. (2026, January 15). Popular culture tells you that schools and parents don't know what's going on, the police are dogs, politicians are all liars and scum, and any crime that's not committed by the Mafia is done by the CIA. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/popular-culture-tells-you-that-schools-and-154832/

Chicago Style
Crouch, Stanley. "Popular culture tells you that schools and parents don't know what's going on, the police are dogs, politicians are all liars and scum, and any crime that's not committed by the Mafia is done by the CIA." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/popular-culture-tells-you-that-schools-and-154832/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Popular culture tells you that schools and parents don't know what's going on, the police are dogs, politicians are all liars and scum, and any crime that's not committed by the Mafia is done by the CIA." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/popular-culture-tells-you-that-schools-and-154832/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Stanley Crouch (December 14, 1945 - September 16, 2020) was a Critic from USA.

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