Even criminal gang members use better manners toward each than to outsiders, because good manners are, basically, defensive. Politics, the art of government, was once restricted to the elite, or those who were considered by others capable of governing. Early America, after independence, became so addicted to politics that men conducted nighttime torchlight parades boosting candidates. But the results of elections until the Depression and a press that attacked sitting President Hoover without mercy or fairness were considered the end of political arguments. Between elections politics were, until the New Deal, largely left to the politicians.
Today electioneering is constant.
But the people's participation in the form of voting, has steadily declined. Government is in the grip of highly specialized bureaucrats who issue orders from above. This system, carried to ultimate extremes in totalitarian nations, has created life under regulations in this land to an extent that would both astonish and horrify our freedom-loving forbears. The nature laws are commonly referred to as Environment Laws, enforced by state and federal EPAs. These could also be called the God laws, because they grant the powers of God over all life in this land.