Politics & Power Quote by Steven Brust

That question lands like a needle slid under the skin of every political conversation: are we actually trading ideas, or just auditioning for moral authority? Steven Brust, a fantasy writer with a long-running interest in power, class, and rebellion, frames politics as a talky minefield where the real hazard isn’t disagreement but sanctimony. “Preaching” is doing a lot of work here. It doesn’t merely mean having strong convictions; it implies a one-way broadcast, the assumption that persuasion is a matter of righteousness rather than reasoning.

The intent is less to police tone than to expose a structural problem: politics is about how we arrange other people’s lives, so it’s inherently moral. That’s why the question feels both hopeful and faintly skeptical. Brust isn’t asking, “Can we be civil?” He’s asking whether political speech can ever escape the gravity of certainty - the temptation to convert rather than converse. In 2026 terms, it reads like an anti-algorithmic wish: a desire for dialogue that isn’t optimized for applause, dunking, or branding.

The subtext is also a quiet self-indictment, which is what makes it work. The “you” invites the reader to check their own habits, not just condemn the other side’s sermon. It recognizes a common performance in political life: we talk to be seen as good, not to be changed. Coming from a novelist, it’s also a meta-question about art itself: when a story engages politics, can it explore power without becoming a lecture? Brust leaves it open, but the sting suggests his answer: possible, rarely; necessary, always worth attempting.