Why is everything so political these days?

Everything is politics. The idea of keeping politics separate, in its own isolated sphere, is antiquated. Leaving politics out of sports, your conversations, your relationships, is a fallacious pipe-dream. Our idea of the realm of politics, has vastly surpassed the true definition of the word.

As long as you’re dealing with people that participate in a society, they are forever embedded into the collective functioning and identity of that society. You can’t remove yourself from the matrix of society, as badly as you may want to.

The ability to carry on with your normal procedures of your life, without much concern about who the lawmakers are, policies being passed, or who the President is, is a privilege not afforded to many people in the world, let alone this country.

“Politics” determine whether or not some people will have another year of healthcare, if a same sex couple can marry, if a person gets attacked on the street because of their religion, or race. It can decide whether or not your kid joins the army and ships off to fight in a war. Politics can determine where you live, where you go to school, who you spend time with, and the nature of what you see, everyday.

You can try to decide to keep politics out of your friendships, relationships and off the dinner table, but the issues we choose to overlook persist and affect real people, in real time. You’re just denying yourself and others the expression of their core beliefs, what they care about and what is affecting them.

Behind the partisan talking points and buzzwords there are real individual choices being made based on deep, fundamental, human beliefs. And that is often what is left out in the conversation; we like to scrutinize people by where they stand, but not how they got there.

We end up missing where we differ in understanding of our core principles, that our “political” beliefs are built upon. Our true desires and perspectives on the world—and how we as humans relate to one other—goes uncommunicated and is lost amongst tribal, petty, partisan, “political,” bicker.

“Politics” are not an arena that operates above us. It operates throughout us and by us. They aren’t as distant, grand and untouchable, as I had come to believe. I have been entirely disillusioned by the last four years, from the Governmental apparatus, and the veil for me has been lifted on the bureaucratic, cluster fudge that is the U.S. Government.

The Government is not a well-oiled, powerful machine, steamrolling its will across the nation; it is a fragmented, fickle, disorganized, and dysfunctional group of individuals. The Government isn’t a secret society, it’s a massive “group project” like in school, when you’re stuck together, with a bunch of random people you don’t know, and are now supposed to work together to solve a problem.

Politicians aren’t high and mighty, powerful people to me anymore; they’re real, regular and fallible humans, who either worked really hard, or manipulated and kissed a lot of ass to be where they are.

You can be a waitress in the Bronx, and start a Grassroots campaign, to become the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

You can be Secretary of Education like Betsy Devos, and have no experience whatsoever, but it’s okay because your friend can get you the job.

You can be President and still drunk tweet directly to your country and the entire world, whatever the hell you want.

If these people can assert themselves so that their voices and concerns are heard, then why shouldn’t we?

It’s time to reimagine our idea of what “politics” is, or should be, and what that means to us. Our society needs to tune-in, rather than tune-out, of the needs of our communities, the failures of our society and confront what we can do to make things better for everyone, including ourselves.

Welcome the “political,” the “controversial,” the “divisive” and understand that our indifference and passivity on taking on real, important issues ends up hurting real people.

Politics affect our everyday lives. You might just not notice it. If you’ve been living a life oblivious to politics, and uninhibited by the ideologies of the people in power, then that is privilege. And you should notice that too.