For example, selling a hamburger would have been an obviously political act in the Soviet Union. We don't see it as such because vanishingly few people believe that commercial transactions between private parties should be forbidden. But whenever someone advertises a hamburger, depicts the purchase of one, or leaves a review of one on a website, they are engaging in an act that we only view as apolitical because of the status quo that we inhabit.
RE your hamburger example, yes, it's apolitical within the context of society where hamburgers aren't political. Free trade or democracy isn't required, a hypothetical restaurant in the Soviet Union wouldn't have a problem selling grilled chicken breast. And if ever the Party decided that grilled chicken is a symbol of capitalism and therefore banned, the restaurant would just switch to serving fried chicken, or something else. Living in the status quo is not the same as endorsing it.
To me, the "not fighting status quo = supporting status quo" view is anathema to civilization. It's the peace-time equivalent of treating civilians as enemy combatants just because they live in the country you're at war with. It's an attempt to get other people to fight in your war, and suffer the collateral damage for you, and most people rightfully oppose it. If you want someone to support your cause, your strategy should be arguing that your cause is just - and not trying to get them to switch by making them believe not supporting you means supporting the enemy.
Yes, being politically active all the time is not something we generally expect from most people / companies. Especially of the latter, since after all, their primary reason of existence is to make money for the investors.
> don't care which side wins
This is a valid political position. Probably the one I'd take for most realpolitik of small incremental changes based on occurring issues. But also one hard to justify in divisive times with diametrically opposed sides becoming highly popular, thus those extremes having an increasing chance to actually & drastically affect our lives.
That is, obviously, only if you live in a democracy were shaping politics is one of our civic duties. By the way, that doesn't mean everyone has to become experts in lots of topics. Delegating this is quite the responsibility as well.
I think it's especially easy to justify in our times, and it's arguably the sane position to take. Polarization and extremism we see in politics today is dangerous to society and democracy itself. Disengaging from various small changes that are orthogonal to you and your community is advisable, because the cost of engaging is increasingly the deterioration of individual relations with people. It's blowing up your own country from the inside.
A lot of political disengagement, including my own, boils down to this: we don't want to fight someone else's war, and we'd preferably like they didn't fight that war, because all this fighting claims a lot of collateral damage.
> By the way, that doesn't mean everyone has to become experts in lots of topics. Delegating this is quite the responsibility as well.
Delegating in modern democracies is actually one of the reasons people disengage even when they do have a stake or opinion on the topic. It's very hard to make any impact on an individual issue (not "it takes some effort hard", but closer to "winning gold on national championship" hard).
Say, for example, that I want my country to invest in nuclear power, or institute carbon taxes (both are things I currently believe in, and to make it less difficult, I'll use "or" in this example, even though I want "and"). There's literally no party in my country I could in good conscience vote for, or work to support. Not a single one. With the one party that seems to share my views on those two topics I have enough disagreements on other things that I feel reluctant to vote for them. And even if I were to put aside our differences for the sake of pushing the two issues I care about, and even if they magically won the next election, I'm very sure (based on historical experience) that they'd successfully change one or two things for the worse (from my POV), while making exactly zero headway on the issues I voted on them for.
I think more people realize this than not, hence the bad election turnouts in most established democracies worldwide. People don't believe their voices will be heard, because there's enough distortion in the middle.
Sure, we can hope this will all blow over, but I don't see reliable mechanisms encouraging this outcome while I really don't want to risk another 1930s germany to repeat itself. Thus I don't see any other way than fighting for (the important parts of) the status quo. Even if it won't be easy.
> Delegating in modern democracies is actually one of the reasons people disengage even when they do have a stake or opinion on the topic.
I was rather talking about using appeals to authority/expertise when forming & defending your opinion. "I'm a for Positions A, B & C cause Person X I respect on some podcast is for it" is fine as defense. You now only have to defend choosing X instead of A, B & C individually.
Yeah, the US two party system seems especially bad. But I'd also look for other factors, since divisiveness seems to generally be on the rise. At least here in germany, with a fresh neo-nazi party worryingly drastically, even with more options available, some of them fitting e.g. your position a lot better than just "left vs right" of the US. Non the less do people still feel ignored and left behind.
Though while looking for more direct counter-examples, the 2019 swiss election does look very similar to their 2007 one. I don't feel confident to form an opinion on that datum alone without knowing the broader context. At the same time, articles about "these places manage to keep their divisiveness in check" would probably not do very well in current media and thus I'd probably not notice them in the first place.
That is, itself, a political stance (and arguably a rather dangerous one; low political engagement tends to be a sign of sick democracies).
If you don't want to take a stand, make something yourself.
Think of it this way: under this view, McDonald's is supporting the status quo on $whatever-issue, because it does not give out political pamphlets with Big Macs. Sitting in a toilet alone and thinking is supporting the status quo, because it does not enable others to voice their view. Etc.