Little Hawk said:

"Politics is the business of conquest...conquest of people's hearts and minds, conquest of land and resources, conquest of the seat of power, conquest of financial control, conquest of religious or secular dogma over opposing dogma."

I propose a different thought about politics.

Politics is an aspect of all levels of human life. In its most generic terms it is the effort to control the flow of the power which resides in the association of two or more human beings.

For instance, John and Mary are going out on a date. John wants to see a shoot-em-up action movie, and Mary wants to see a sweet romantic movie. Each wants to influence the outcome of their joint power to do something that evening, and lobbies for his/her choice. That, my friends, is politics at the grassroots level.

The folk club has people who want to run meetings as singarounds; it also has people who want general jamming. That's politics, the effort to exercise the joint power the group has in a particular way.

The community has people who want the schools to have bands and plays and a wide variety of sports. Other citizens want every action taken possible to cut costs and thus taxes. There are arguments, and people run for the school board, others support them as organizations like "Citizens for Better Schools", or maybe "Citizens for Responsible Government", a sort of proto-political party in each case.

In each of these cases, from two people up to worldwide, it's the built-in human drive to control the power that lies in human association, that constitutes politics. There's no difference, from top to bottom: It's all politics.

Dave Oesterreich