Sounds like "beatings will continue until the moral improves," but that's how it was at least for Europe. It needed to go multiple rounds of very brutal collective self-punishment for popular politics to kind of start minimally working.
Stopping doing politics, means to leave the status quo as is, and give the at the time "leading brand" of political though no contest.
History tells us, giving up on politics usually means to leave one group of political extremists uncontested by all others.