If you're not participating in politics, politics is certainly participating in you.
I get it. This country/society that we're in is basically the Titanic, and any one person trying to push it in one direction does almost nothing. But almost nothing is still better than nothing.
The iceberg is a little off our starboard bow, so I get a little offended when people imply steering left and right is the same thing. Each of us in a democracy has an obligation to try to improve our society, because the alternative is the world going to shit. The bare minimum of that is knowing what's going on, having an opinion about it, and voting.
Public discussion is an increasingly important part of that. The idea that it's not polite to talk about politics and people fully ignoring "politics" is how we got to the shitshow we're in today.