Driven sometimes by ideas and pictures, but not necessarily, by “politics” I would mean rather the crude and rough, on the ground, and grubby jostling for and distribution of status and position, authority and power in the organization of society between members and representatives of competing social groups. If you don’t understand this, then maybe you don’t understand politics. Not for prophets or saviors, it’s art is coalition building, polemics, and moral compromise. Not “messianic,” the picture of politics inevitably disappoints.