The media wants to believe that there is a quiet, impartial and neutral baseline to existence. Occasionally framed as a personal taste and private life that sits safely outside the sharp edges of ideology. I’m not that into politics and can’t we just enjoy this without making it political are comforting facades we live by.
There is no standard. There is no neutral state. Nothing is neither impartial nor subjective, and everything—from the light in the sky to the breath in your lungs—is political.
To understand why specifically, you only have to look at the fabric of your daily life. The platform Everything Is Political puts it plainly: culture, ecology, love and human existence are not passive backdrops. They are therefore active terrains of power, extraction, and resistance. When we claim impartiality, we don’t evade the systems that shape us; instead, we merely forfeit our power to change them.
The Politics of the Impartial World
The politics of the neutral world considers the things we treat as universal, natural, or purely aesthetic, like air, the sun, food, music, race, parenthood and clothing, to be simplistic
Food & Beauty
What is on your plate is not a neutral matter of preference. Agricultural subsidies, land ownership, trade blockades, and corporate monopolies govern food systems. Agriculture determines who starves and who thrives. Similarly, standards of beauty—what we deem “attractive” or “neat”—are heavily enforced blueprints designed by racial capitalism, historical dominance, and consumer markets.
Air & Health
Clean air is not a neutral, guaranteed feature of the Earth; it is a resource distributed along racial and class lines. The zip code you are born in dictates the toxins in your lungs, the likelihood of childhood asthma, and your overall life expectancy. Health is not merely a matter of personal “wellness”—it is the direct outcome of environmental policy, corporate regulation, and state priority.
According to a 2022 post by The Guardian, in Los Angeles, black, Hispanic and Asian communities of the lowest socioeconomic status endured average pollution that was 38% greater than their white counterparts.
The Sun
The sun is not removed from global geopolitics. Africa’s solar radiation, its land, and its people remain caught in the long, continuous arc of neo-colonial trade routes. As the West scrambles for a “green energy transition,” the scorching solar potential of North Africa and the rich mineral wealth across the African continent are framed as resources to be extracted for foreign profit.
Race
Division through race that led to racism is not merely a collection of personal prejudices or bad attitudes. It is an institutional system designed to organise life- for hundreds of years- to manage labor, allocate resources, and dictate whose survival matters.
Parenthood
Parenthood is rarely a private family dynamic in a vacuum. It is explicitly defined by paid family leave policies (or the lack thereof), affordable healthcare, reproductive autonomy, workplace design and state surveillance. Who gets to parent is political. How safely they do it is also political. Whose children are protected and whose families are torn apart by borders or carceral systems are intensely political realities.
In the US, sweeping ICE raids are tearing families apart. Communities are being terrorised and transforming once-safe spaces into zones of fear, with people’s lives disrupted and, in some cases, violently taken.
Moving Money as a Political Act
If every artifact, breath, and relationship is embedded in systems of power, then neutrality is an illusion—especially when it comes to capital. We often view money through a sterile, transactional lens: earn, spend, save, invest. But capital is one of the purest forms of political energy. Every dollar moving through your hands is a vote for the world as it is, or a lever pulled to change it.
Dolly Parton famously avoided taking direct sides in partisan politics, stating that she would rather “pass a kidney stone” than get involved. Parton knew the cost of staying quiet and was political in her own way. She effectively used her vast fortune and philanthropy to enact tangible, values-driven change. Parton even turned down the Presidential Medal of Freedom from two different presidents. This goes to show that even an apolitical stance is not removed from politics.
Politically moving money means stripping away the illusion that financial decisions are purely personal or economic. This means asking uncomfortable, vital questions like: what supply chains are you feeding?
Moving money politically means shifting from passive charity to active mutual aid and reparations. It means moving funds directly to grassroots organisers, land trusts, and communities on the frontlines of systemic crises without bureaucratic gatekeeping.
Reclaiming Your Political Agency
Realising that everything is political can feel overwhelming at first, but it is ultimately freeing. When you accept that nothing is purely subjective, you stop viewing your struggles and issues. You finally begin to see them for what they are: the direct results of structural design.
Furthermore, if these systems were designed, they can be dismantled. Once we recognise the politics in our air, our food, our clothes, and our choices, we stop being passive consumers of power. We unquestionably become intentional players in building a world built on collective liberation.