I am sorry, but you are incorrect. The word politics comes from polity, meaning a group of people who share an identity. When you say that politics is “power plays and public relations,” you are repeating propaganda that was designed to disenfranchise people. Politics is about working on a shared project: building a good society. Bad actors have infiltrated politics, but they don’t get to replace the basic meaning of the word.
That make sense for why the confusion is there. But… “bad actors” or not, the well is poisoned. You don’t keep drinking from a poisoned well just because you think it shouldn’t be. Especially when there are other wells that are readily available. If anything, being able to distinguish between the two is more helpful than trying to keep waters that are already irrevocably muddied just because archaically they were not.
I am sorry, but you are incorrect. The word politics comes from polity, meaning a group of people who share an identity. When you say that politics is “power plays and public relations,” you are repeating propaganda that was designed to disenfranchise people. Politics is about working on a shared project: building a good society. Bad actors have infiltrated politics, but they don’t get to replace the basic meaning of the word.
That make sense for why the confusion is there. But… “bad actors” or not, the well is poisoned. You don’t keep drinking from a poisoned well just because you think it shouldn’t be. Especially when there are other wells that are readily available. If anything, being able to distinguish between the two is more helpful than trying to keep waters that are already irrevocably muddied just because archaically they were not.