

Nobody can keep themselves out of politics. It just doesn’t work that way, because politics works its way into your life wherever you go. You can choose not talk about it, which is typically an endorsement of the status quo, and that in itself is a clear political message that you’re sending to people around you.
Rather than say that this is a failure of public education, I think it might be more instructed to think of it as the conservative movement succeeding. In many communities, it’s considered rude to bring up things that will upset people, and that typically includes political topics. You can’t point out that the police chief is running a scam, for example, because that would embarrass the mayor who hired the police chief, and that would make you rude for embarrassing them… That kind of thought, the blind pro establishment view, is a strong part of culture in many areas of the country.
(And I’m using the word conservative here to refer to the people currently in power keeping power, not specifically to refer to the Republican party.)