Politics & Power Quote by Ronald Steel

Steel’s line lands because it treats modern politics less like a clash of ideas than a change in medium: from trench warfare to broadcast. “Battle” implies stakes, strategy, and friction between organized forces. You can lose, regroup, and fight again. “Spectacle” implies something else entirely: politics as a staged event designed to be watched, replayed, meme-ified, and consumed. The shift isn’t just stylistic; it’s structural. When attention becomes the scarce resource, victory goes to whoever can seize the frame, not necessarily whoever has the stronger argument.

The intent is diagnostic, almost impatient: stop romanticizing partisan combat as if it still produces governance. Steel suggests that political actors now perform conflict for cameras and platforms, outsourcing persuasion to optics. The subtext is that citizens are being recast from participants into an audience. That’s a demotion. An audience is moved, amused, enraged, then sent back to their lives; an engaged public pressures institutions, tolerates complexity, and demands receipts.

Context matters: the late-20th-century rise of television politics, the consultant class, and the permanent campaign set the stage for today’s algorithmic escalation. In spectacle politics, policy becomes set dressing and outrage becomes fuel. Compromise reads as weakness because it’s bad television. Even “battle” is simulated: fights are curated for maximum visibility, not maximum consequence.

Steel’s punch is that spectacle doesn’t replace conflict; it monetizes it. It turns democracy into content, and content into a treadmill where governing is perpetually postponed by the next scene.