Politics in Bermuda, as elsewhere, tends to be an odd combination of occasionally inspired statesmanship, day-to-day stewardship ranging from the pragmatic to the barely serviceable and increasingly gaudy showmanship.

Indeed we live in an age where our perceptions of issues and their importance are increasingly built on illusion rather than a solid foundation of fact.

Political spin is, of course, as old as politics itself.

However, since the advent of social media and the proliferation of smartphones and other mobile technology, our appetite for contrived packets of easily digestible information has grown exponentially while our attention spans and critical faculties have waned.

And this holds as true for politics as any other area of our lives. So very pronounced is our hunger for condensed and oversimplified versions of events that the hollow stagecraft of political theatre now routinely trumps statecraft as the weapon of choice in the arsenal of many practising politicians.

Bermuda’s national dialogue is increasingly dominated by contrived and stage-managed events, with our political figures becoming performance artists in ongoing shows of their own devising. And we are their captive audience, routinely distracted by even their silliest antics because we suffer from a collective and increasingly pronounced case of short-term cultural amnesia. Substance, nuance, detail and context are all becoming less and less relevant in a society increasingly in thrall to the appeal of the immediate.

You can’t altogether blame politicians for exploiting this trend as they go about selling their personal political brands and, in some instances, their personal agendas, on the internet.

After all, social media’s spontaneity and faux sense of intimacy can provide media and tech-savvy politicians with decided stylistic advantages. Given the substantively interchangeable nature of the ideas, ideologies and personalities on offer in Bermuda’s political culture, the flash and filigree of style can, and often does, provide the winning edge over the almost identical content of an opponent’s position.

There was a case in point just this weekend. In the latest act in the continuing, slow-motion palace coup that has been under way against Opposition leader Marc Bean throughout most of this year, David Burt very publicly announced his resignation as shadow finance spokesman on Facebook.

Burt flouted the rules of political etiquette and abandoned protocol with an almost flamboyant glee. The normal procedure would have been for him to submit a written letter of resignation to the man who appointed him and at whose pleasure he served as shadow minister — and then to wait. Only after his resignation had been accepted and Bean had issued his own “through gritted teeth” statement regretting Burt’s departure and reinforcing the need for party unity and discipline with a General Election a little more than a year off would an outgoing shadow spokesman usually feel free to issue a public statement of his own.

Burt’s break with decorum was, of course, designed not to satisfy traditionalists but to achieve the maximum visceral impact on various social-media platforms. And this is precisely what occurred.

Although certainly not unexpected — he now joins a bloc of at least seven other Progressive Labour Party MPs intent on ousting Bean — the dramatic manner in which Burt announced he had left the shadow cabinet did succeed in catching both the Opposition leader and most of the island’s political observers unawares.

It was also one of the most flamboyant ways imaginable for Burt to position himself in the public mind as a possible successor to Bean, given the Opposition leader now has a mandate that rests on a bare majority of his parliamentary colleagues’ votes. Just one more defection from his shadow cabinet could technically precipitate a leadership crisis in the PLP. For now the online noise and the momentum are with Burt and the anti-Bean camp. But lost amid all of the weekend’s giddy theatrics, the calculated one-upmanship and the public denigration of Bean’s leadership are the underlying reasons for the factional fighting now raging within the PLP.

Nor has Burt been at all forthcoming about how, if afforded the opportunity to lead the PLP, he actually proposes to heal the rifts exposed by MPs’ growing misgivings over the direction Bean is taking the party. The rebel faction’s showmanship has been attention-grabbing and eyebrow-raising, but in and of itself it is not a substitute for gravitas, sincerity of purpose and a clear alternative direction for the Opposition.

It’s probably fair to conclude that after almost a full year of watching this internal leadership conflict play out in increasingly dramatic ways in the public arena, most Bermudians — no matter how short their attention spans or how blunt their critical faculties — have had their fill of the showmanship.

At this stage, some evidence of the rebel group’s commitment to the public interest rather than just to the “Gotcha!” politics of taking down Marc Bean would be extremely welcome. For many Bermudians are beginning to view the widening schism less as an attempt to reform and retool the PLP but more as a hostile takeover attempt of the party machine to cater to some MPs’ self-serving interests rather than those of the wider community.