The problem is getting hooked on politics that doesn't actually affect you personally, other people on your team, or how you do your job. Just like we do on Hacker News, you can have employees reading about stuff happening elsewhere in the world, commenting on it, and getting upset over it.

At large companies, this can include things going on in different parts of the company. You don't know them or how they work, but you start taking it personally because it affects the company's reputation.

I'm retired, but if I went back to work, I would want to pay more attention to helping my co-workers and accomplishing the team's mission (which of course involves some politics) and pay a lot less attention to other, less relevant politics.

You can say it's privileged to want to shut out the world and concentrate on improving one thing, but I prefer to think of this as an aspirational goal.