Thoughts about what politics is.

I read an article somewhere on the Internet asking what Politics is for and also what it is. Good questions.  I will try to answer.

• Politics is sports for the nonathletic.
• Politics is for many a means of having something to concern themselves. (Why should I care about American politics or even Canadian politics for that matter?)
• Politics is not about virtue.  Castro, Stalin, Mao, JFK, Clinton,...
• Politics is about power.
• Politics is a way to suspend true debate and true questioning.  Politicians dare not think aloud.
• Politics is a means of selecting decision makers.
• Politics is questionable if it is a means of selecting true leaders.  Clinton, for example, was always taking the pulse of the public -- he had no ideas himself and so never lead us anywhere new.
• Politics is a way of tribalising ourselves.  If I learn what some culture figure's politics are -- they become part of or separate from my tribe.  I have a hard time interacting with leftists.  I fear that people, I do like, are not part of my political tribe -- I shudder to ask them about their politics.
• In this day and age, politics replaces the sectarianism of religion.
• Politics satisfies an urge for wanting the improbable and suspending the laws of physics.  Politics and Economics shouldn't mix, don't mix, and yet people say they vote because the more the government does about the economy, the less it can do to really improve it.  It is like a cowboy trying to ride a zebra.
• A skyscraper built in the middle of the prairie -- stimulus?
• The Left, in practice, is opposed to what it professes.  The Right lacks the courage to do what it professes.
• What kinds of problems can politics solve?  Fewer than it tries to solve in practice.
• Politics should be local.  Why should some federal executive have so much say in our day-to-day?  We should know who are local politicians are.  Why should we care so much what some federal executive has to say.
• Should the wise have more say in politics than the fools?  And who is wise?  And who is the fool?  How do we determine?
• Conservatives take themselves too seriously?  And Progressives have the ability to laugh at themselves?  Hah!!!
• If libertarians are into hip-hop, then I am a conservative.  Listening to the Creative Destruction Podcast, I wonder how any libertarian could support Obama?