How Los Angeles Became a Stage for Political Spectacle
How Los Angeles Became a Stage for Political Spectacle
The Theater of Manufactured Crisis: How Los Angeles Became a Stage for Political Spectacle
The deployment of 700 Marines to guard "two buildings" in downtown Los Angeles represents nothing less than the weaponization of American democracy for partisan gain. When more U.S. troops patrol the streets of Los Angeles than currently serve in Syria and Iraq combined—not to defend the nation, but to advance political careers—we have crossed a dangerous threshold that demands immediate recognition and resistance.
What unfolded in June 2025 was not civil unrest meeting federal response. It was a calculated conspiracy of mutual exploitation, where both President Trump and California's Democratic leaders discovered they could harvest political capital from manufactured chaos. The graffiti-covered federal buildings and deployed Marines were merely props in an elaborate performance designed to serve the ambitions of political actors who have abandoned governing in favor of spectacle.
This is not hyperbole—it is the logical conclusion drawn from the evidence of deliberate provocation, systematic exaggeration, and the admission by analysts that both sides found "political upside in a protracted showdown." When political leaders benefit from creating and prolonging crisis rather than resolving it, democratic governance itself becomes the casualty.
Federal Orchestration: The Art of Provoked Response
The federal strategy reveals itself as a masterclass in manufactured crisis. President Trump's administration didn't stumble into confrontation—it engineered it through aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids targeting the everyday spaces where immigrant communities work. These operations were deliberately designed to provoke unrest in a city that Mayor Bass confirmed "had been peaceful" before federal agents began their campaign of disruption.
The raids operated like a perfectly timed catalyst. The arrest of labor leader David Huerta during one such operation provided the immediate spark, but the broader pattern revealed a more systematic approach. As Bass noted, the Department of Homeland Security deliberately avoided coordinating with city government, ensuring maximum disruption and surprise. Local officials learned of raids as they happened—activists' phones "blowing up" during meetings, a city caught perpetually off-guard by its own federal government.
This manufactured emergency then became the justification for an unprecedented federal military deployment. Trump activated the California National Guard without Governor Gavin Newsom's consent—the first time in over half a century a president had taken such action. But the president's rhetoric vastly exceeded the reality on the ground. He claimed Los Angeles "would have been completely obliterated" without federal intervention, despite eyewitness accounts revealing that "physical confrontations were carried out almost entirely by the L.A.P.D., the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and other coordinated state and local law-enforcement agencies."
The gap between representation and reality became a feature, not a bug, of the federal strategy. Trump's social media proclamations about "RIOTS & LOOTERS" fed what observers called a "social-media circus" that relied heavily on "the public's misunderstanding of L.A. geography" and "looping footage of two Waymos on fire downtown." The actual National Guard presence—a dozen soldiers with plastic shields standing in front of federal buildings—bore little resemblance to the dramatic federal intervention described in presidential tweets.
This exaggerated narrative served a larger political project. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt explicitly linked the deployment to Trump's "campaign promise" to carry out "the largest mass deportation campaign in American history." The Los Angeles deployment became, in the words of retired Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré, "a precursor to what he wants to do elsewhere around the country"—a test case for normalizing troops in American cities and expanding executive power over domestic military deployment.
State Counter-Performance: Resistance as Political Capital
California's state leaders proved equally adept at exploiting the crisis, transforming legitimate concerns about federal overreach into a lucrative political commodity. Governor Newsom, transparently "angling to be the next president," recognized that confronting Trump would "burnish his resistance credentials" more effectively than any policy achievement ever could.
Newsom's emergency motion to block the federal deployment served dual purposes: legitimate legal challenge and political positioning. His public opposition created a clear contrast with Trump's aggressive federalism while establishing his credentials as a national Democratic leader capable of standing up to federal overreach. Mayor Bass similarly positioned herself as the defender of local governance, emphasizing that "who saved the day are our local law-enforcement agencies," directly countering Trump's claims about National Guard effectiveness.
But state actors also contributed to the spectacle they ostensibly opposed. Bass characterized the entire episode as a "grand experiment to see what happens when the federal government decides they want to roll up on a state or roll up on the city and take over"—language that emphasized the theatrical, experimental nature of the conflict. Even more tellingly, Governor Newsom "exaggerated the military's impact," implying in a televised address that it was the National Guard, not the LAPD, that had escalated confrontations with protesters.
This mutual exaggeration reveals the deeper truth: both sides found political value in maintaining and amplifying the confrontation. The "social-media circus" wasn't an unfortunate byproduct of the crisis—it was the medium through which both federal and state actors communicated their political messages to national audiences.
The Dangerous Precedent of Performative Governance
The Los Angeles deployment represents a fundamental assault on democratic principles disguised as public safety measures. Trump's invocation of Section 12406 of Title 10 constitutes what legal scholar Stephen I. Vladeck condemns as an unprecedented use of military authority "for what really are partisan political purposes, more than they are public safety restoration purposes."
When Pentagon spokesmen celebrate deploying more troops to American streets than to active war zones, we witness the complete militarization of political messaging. This isn't public safety—it's political intimidation designed to "get Americans used to seeing troops in the streets of major cities," normalizing what should be unthinkable in a democracy.
Most troubling is the mutual political incentive structure that emerged. As one analysis noted, "Neither Mr Newsom and Mr Trump seem prepared to back down. There is, unfortunately, political upside in a protracted showdown for both men." This creates a perverse dynamic where political leaders benefit from prolonging crisis rather than resolving it—where governance becomes subordinated to the strategic value of maintaining confrontation.
The historical precedents Trump invoked—from Little Rock in 1957 to the 1992 Los Angeles riots—involved clear threats to public safety or constitutional order that overwhelmed local capacity. The current deployment lacks such justification, instead representing what retired General Honoré called an attempt "to set the conditions and see how far he could go."
Beyond the Spectacle
The Los Angeles deployment has exposed a malignant transformation in American political culture: crisis is no longer something to be resolved but something to be harvested. The traditional relationship between problem and solution has been deliberately inverted by leaders who have discovered that manufacturing and prolonging chaos yields greater political dividends than governing effectively.
This corruption of democratic purpose demands more than concern—it demands action. Legal constraints on executive power must be immediately strengthened, particularly around the Insurrection Act, to prevent future politically motivated deployments. Media institutions must abandon false equivalencies and clearly distinguish between legitimate crisis response and manufactured political spectacle. Most critically, voters must recognize and reject leaders who profit from chaos rather than create order.
The graffiti scrawled across Los Angeles's federal buildings—"when tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty"—captures something profound about this moment. But the tyranny we face isn't found in any single federal deployment or state resistance. It lies in the systematic transformation of American governance into performance art, where the urgent work of democracy becomes subordinated to the endless theater of political ambition. The choice before us is stark: restore governance or accept spectacle as our permanent political condition.