It turns out that that the degree to which you can avoid politics is proportional to the number of other people involved. You can probably safely ignore international politics: there are around 8 billion other people involved in it, and unless you are prepared to devote most of your time to it, you probably aren't going to move any needles anywhere.

Family politics, on the other hand, involves maybe a dozen people. Usually less. We don't even call it "family politics" even though it really kind of is. Family politics is important and you can not opt out unless you don't want (this) family. Even disengagement is a form of active participation here!

Somewhere in between, there is a line. The author says (and I agree) that workplace politics is on the "really you should be caring" side.