"I don't like cats" is a fairly apolitical statement, that is until such point as political parties start taking stances on cats and arguing in favor of who subsidizes what kinds of feline activities.
I have many beliefs that I regard as accidentally political - which is to say that I believe these things regardless of whether or which politicians happen to agree, or what their political affiliations are, or how closely tied their affiliations are to mine. It doesn't particularly matter to me whether others regard those beliefs as political or not, but it seems that we're approaching an era in which anything and everything can be deemed 'political' in some way merely because parties choose to take positions on them, and that may be completely at odds with how an individual may have come to conclusions on their own.
I think I see what you mean, maybe there is a need to differentiate (individual conclusions "on their own", though there'd be arguments in favour of viewing those as political as well, etc.) But perhaps not at the expense of the term "political" (but rather introduction of some other term). Because it's simply not the case that something is necessarily apolitical "until such point as political parties start taking stances on cats". Some revolutions, changes in political regime, etc. happened not via the process of already existing political establishment systems (of which parliamentary parties is a mere (and not necessary (being descriptive here, not prescriptive)) subset of) accepting / incorporating / etc. some views at all (rather the exact opposite, say).
Also, "I don't like cats" is a sort of easy example to use here, but if you take e.g. "domestic violence should not happen", where do you draw the line in terms of when it becomes political (let's say you start a grassroots network where victims of domestic violence can support each other, and gradually build political capital, and so on)...
That said, differentiation along your lines is maybe useful, but severely redefining the scope of the term "political" seems a weird way to go about it.
I think the best way to understand this reality is that when it comes down to it, a lot more things are political than one would think.
For example, "I don't like cats" is apolitical because it doesn't take into consideration anyone but you. But as soon as you say, "we like cats too much", that's political.
An example I would give is someone that's debating which feature an open-source project should work on. That's inherently political. The only difference between that and whether or not we should fund smartphones for homeless people, for example, is a matter of scale.
An issue I see right off the bat, how do you deal with the reality that politics can and does exist without and within, not just between political parties?
I think the best definition of politics is anything that relates to the making of decisions that concern a group of people. If whatever you are doing or talking about concerns how we should make decisions, then it is political. And I don't think that's an issue. To try to limit politics to what happens in an electoral party state is pretty sad and reductive, and contributes to political apathy.
"I don't like cats" is a fairly apolitical statement, that is until such point as political parties start taking stances on cats and arguing in favor of who subsidizes what kinds of feline activities.
I have many beliefs that I regard as accidentally political - which is to say that I believe these things regardless of whether or which politicians happen to agree, or what their political affiliations are, or how closely tied their affiliations are to mine. It doesn't particularly matter to me whether others regard those beliefs as political or not, but it seems that we're approaching an era in which anything and everything can be deemed 'political' in some way merely because parties choose to take positions on them, and that may be completely at odds with how an individual may have come to conclusions on their own.