As someone who has actually worked in government, I can tell you that politics is not the business of governing. Politics often gets in the way of actual governance. Think of the phrase "office politics" and all that it entails -- petty squabbling over power structures and influence, i.e. tribalism. I assure you that at the largest scale "office politics" very much exist. We just drop the "office" qualifier.
Government implements policy. Enacting policy is the goal of governance. Politics is a catch-all category for the social competition to establish policies which is intrinsic to human nature and exists in various forms in all cultures. As rationalists we have a better mechanism for deciding policy than glorified piss competitions that pass for politics today. But although we reject tribalistic politics we should not shy away from matters of policy.
In a recent poll, many LW members expressed interest in a separate website for rational discussion of political topics. The website has been created, but we need a group of volunteers to help us test it and calibrate its recommendation system (see below).
If you would like to help (by participating in one or two discussions and giving us your feedback) please sign up here.
About individual recommendation system
All internet forums face a choice between freedom of speech and quality of debate. In absence of censorship, constructive discussions can be easily disrupted by the inflow of the mind-killed which causes the more intelligent participants to leave or descend to the same level.
Preserving quality thus usually requires at least one of the following methods:
On the new website, we are going to experiment with a different method. In brief, the idea is to use an automated recommendation system which sorts content, raising the best comments to the top and (optionally) hiding the worst. The sorting is done based on the individual preferences, allowing each user to avoid what he or she (rather than moderators or anyone else) defines as low quality content. In this way we should be able to enhance quality without imposing limits on free speech.
UPDATE. The discussions are scheduled to start on May 1.