Not inherently. Politics is inherently about policy, the consensus mechanism involved is undefined. The fact it's been degraded into a carnival of moralistic cultural violence and individuals and their virtues, charisma or lack thereof is not at all inevitable.

The job of a state is to create social good for its citizens by solving tragedies of commons which promote opportunities, solving common problems in a way that takes advantage of scale, and holding other organizations (other states, corporations, whatever) or individuals accountable not to be creating harm. By reducing them to cultural divide-and-conquer games this process has been crippled. A certain economic class is responsible for this, is not even subtle about it, and propagandizes the other classes into believing that it benefits them, that the worn down veneer of democratic processes involved could somehow legitimizes it despite the obviously poor outcomes.

When I see people say left/right or "whole spectrum" of political ideas I know they've bought into this reductive vision of what politics could ever even possibly be, and it's as disappointing as it is common.

I particularly love when I get involved in a demographic survey and I get asked to rank myself on a "very liberal" to "very conservative" spectrum as if those are the only possibilities. I am incredibly critical of both of these ideologies and positions of "compromise" between them are even worse: ahistorical, amoral and unethical.

People who live their whole lives within the Overton Window and can't imagine anyone lives outside of it are incredibly bizarre to me.