"Unfortunately, in the civilization of the spectacle, the influence that culture exerts over politics does not help it maintain certain standards of excellence and integrity but instead contributes to its moral and civil decline, stimulating its worst aspects, including, for example, bad acting. I'm the prevailing culture, politics has been increasingly replacing ideas and ideals, intellectual debate and programmes, with mere publicity and an obsession with physical appearance. As a consequence, popularity and success are achieved not so much through intelligence or probity as through demagogy and a talent for histrionics. We are thus left with the curious paradox that while in authoritarian societies it is politics that corrupt and degrade culture, in modern democracies it is culture -- or what usurps the name -- that corrupts and degrades politics and politicians.

-Mario Vargas Llosa, Culture, Politics, and Power.