I used to get exercised by politics, the mechanics and the isms and all the shiny, shiny pageantry. It's pretty easy to get sucked in; people like to be a part of something bigger than themselves, and politics is an obvious vector for those impulses. The problem is you get inside and you realize that everyone is fighting to be the one who gets to define what exactly it is that is bigger than our individual selves. You end up wading in this vile slurry of emotional projection, fantasy wish fulfillment and raging ego. Gross.
The funny thing about stuff that's bigger than us, though, is that it's bigger than us. Politics isn't, really. It's just us writ large, a rather less inspiring notion. It is the illusion of control rather than the substance, and the substance in this case really is unobtainable. Remember, bigger than us; we're eminently dispensable. I tend toward a strategy these days of tending to the little corner of the universe I occupy, and, you know, just mostly trying not to be a dick.