Political: relating to the ideas or strategies of a particular party or group in politics.
> anything you don't like (or is unlike you) is "political".
As I understand the term, this is correct. Politics are a way of setting standards for parties who wish to negotiate resolution to disagreements in communities, or am I off base here?
As the term is used in this context, "political" is synonymous with "partisan". That is, rather than resolving specific disagreements within communities, it invokes the entire web of alliances and tradeoffs that bind members of a party together. The negotiation is tied to all of the other negotiations that people hold with each other, even if it's completely unrelated to the matter at hand, and independent of people's actual feelings about the matter.
One is accused of "playing politics" when one's goals are perceived as applying to their longer-term partisan influences rather than this issue. They may, for example, play to one specific constituency who feels very strongly, even if the other constituencies feel the opposite way. Those other constituencies are assumed to not place as high a priority on it, and so tolerate going against their preferences.
