Exactly. I used to think of myself as apolitical. But there's no "outside" the system.
I could ignore politics because the existing political dynamics worked for me and the people I cared about. This was tenable for me because the US was for decades controlled by centrists who agreed on a lot. But as XKCD graphs nicely, the era of centrism was basically 1940-1980:
After that, the center-right block in the House steadily diminished, and was extinct by 2008. As many of the Republican Never Trump folks make clear, their party has become unrecognizable to them. Previous conservative standards like balanced budgets, rule of law, and personal virtue have become irrelevant there. It has shifted from a positive-sum game to a zero- or negative-sum game of pure political dominance.
As much as I enjoyed my youthful obliviousness and above-it-all sense of superiority, those are dead. The post-war political infrastructure has broken down, and restoring it is the work of decades. However much we want to ignore politics, it has stopped ignoring us.
I could ignore politics because the existing political dynamics worked for me and the people I cared about. This was tenable for me because the US was for decades controlled by centrists who agreed on a lot. But as XKCD graphs nicely, the era of centrism was basically 1940-1980:
https://xkcd.com/1127/large/
After that, the center-right block in the House steadily diminished, and was extinct by 2008. As many of the Republican Never Trump folks make clear, their party has become unrecognizable to them. Previous conservative standards like balanced budgets, rule of law, and personal virtue have become irrelevant there. It has shifted from a positive-sum game to a zero- or negative-sum game of pure political dominance.
As much as I enjoyed my youthful obliviousness and above-it-all sense of superiority, those are dead. The post-war political infrastructure has broken down, and restoring it is the work of decades. However much we want to ignore politics, it has stopped ignoring us.