Where I tend to say "everything is political" is when someone is anointing themselves as rational, objective, disinterested, in advocating some position, policy or choice. One of the professors I worked within graduate school used to say this to a group of us: you guys have a politics, I just have the facts. When in fact he was *quite* political both in the kind of history he wrote, the sort of research he valued, and the general way he worked within his university and across his field. That is a bullshit move and I am always comfortable calling someone on it. It's the opposite of what you describe, which is "I don't want to argue about this right now, but I do want you to understand that I'm not comfortable with what you're advocating"--the person who says "I'm objective and disinterested, you're biased and political" is just trying to hit the "win" button on an argument, sometimes consequentially so.
But I think you're right that there are times where it's just a polite demurral that is actually politically important in the sense that the person who is being political might discover that their position isn't as popular or accepted as they think it is. Or it's a warning that if the strong advocate persists in their advocacy, they're going to flip someone into opposition--"can we please keep this apolitical" is the equivalent of a brightly colored tropical frog saying "I'm just going about my business, but if you try to eat me, I'm going to poison you".
Sometimes it's also a polite way to say, "Given your politics, there are more important things for you to be focusing your finite energies on, so the fact that you're in my face about this suggests that the issue is not your politics but your disdain/dislike for me personally and if so, get the fuck out of here". E.g., the dude who sits next to you during the NBA championships and wants to argue with you about capitalism is either strategically stupid about his politics or he's trying to be an asshole to you in specific.
I have difficulty articulating to others that my broad statement that "everything is political" specifically means what you wrote, "any enterprise involving more than one singular human will inevitably include an element of politics," and does not come from a desire to be willfully obtuse about the desire to not have arguments over policy disagreements, nor from a place of rhetorical leveraging. I have had conversations with folks who have never explicitly considered that "the process of making collective decisions to coordinate the actions of multiple people is what politics is," so I have an uphill battle with first needing to explain that principle before discussing the appropriateness of political advocacy in different contexts. Thank you for sharing your perspective, as this helps me better explain mine.
Where I tend to say "everything is political" is when someone is anointing themselves as rational, objective, disinterested, in advocating some position, policy or choice. One of the professors I worked within graduate school used to say this to a group of us: you guys have a politics, I just have the facts. When in fact he was *quite* political both in the kind of history he wrote, the sort of research he valued, and the general way he worked within his university and across his field. That is a bullshit move and I am always comfortable calling someone on it. It's the opposite of what you describe, which is "I don't want to argue about this right now, but I do want you to understand that I'm not comfortable with what you're advocating"--the person who says "I'm objective and disinterested, you're biased and political" is just trying to hit the "win" button on an argument, sometimes consequentially so.
But I think you're right that there are times where it's just a polite demurral that is actually politically important in the sense that the person who is being political might discover that their position isn't as popular or accepted as they think it is. Or it's a warning that if the strong advocate persists in their advocacy, they're going to flip someone into opposition--"can we please keep this apolitical" is the equivalent of a brightly colored tropical frog saying "I'm just going about my business, but if you try to eat me, I'm going to poison you".
Sometimes it's also a polite way to say, "Given your politics, there are more important things for you to be focusing your finite energies on, so the fact that you're in my face about this suggests that the issue is not your politics but your disdain/dislike for me personally and if so, get the fuck out of here". E.g., the dude who sits next to you during the NBA championships and wants to argue with you about capitalism is either strategically stupid about his politics or he's trying to be an asshole to you in specific.
I have difficulty articulating to others that my broad statement that "everything is political" specifically means what you wrote, "any enterprise involving more than one singular human will inevitably include an element of politics," and does not come from a desire to be willfully obtuse about the desire to not have arguments over policy disagreements, nor from a place of rhetorical leveraging. I have had conversations with folks who have never explicitly considered that "the process of making collective decisions to coordinate the actions of multiple people is what politics is," so I have an uphill battle with first needing to explain that principle before discussing the appropriateness of political advocacy in different contexts. Thank you for sharing your perspective, as this helps me better explain mine.