Imagine a neighborhood with broken streetlights and everyone complaining, but almost nobody shows up to the council meeting. Then a few people do, and the budget shifts. That's politics at its most basic, and it's why I'm for it. My opponent is right that it can be messy, slow, and full of self-interest. But the alternative isn't a cleaner world; it's decisions made by whoever already has power. Politics is how people negotiate, compromise, and fix shared problems. It's not always pretty, but refusing to engage doesn't make it better. It just hands the microphone to someone else.