It is a cavernous understatement to say politics today is frustrating. I don’t like the idea that it’s a game with winner-take-all. Or the oft-ludicrous reasons people end up in one camp or the other.

I would prefer politicians listen to all sides’ concerns and reach a reasonable, shared consensus rather than a “compromise” that comes with horse-trading unrelated issues.

I want kindness and justice to win out in the end. Historically, though, that’s not how the world works. I was reminded of this when recently rereading “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1997 book by Jared Diamond.

Early in his book, Diamond recounts a conflict between the Mauri and the Moriori. Both groups descended from early Polynesians who settled New Zealand in the late 13th century.

The Mauri remained in New Zealand, becoming fierce warriors, both among themselves and later against European invaders.

The Moriori were Mauri who left New Zealand around 1500, migrating some 400 miles east to the much smaller and colder Chatham Islands (Rekohu). According to Diamond, their isolated, resource-limited environment led them to embrace a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and a pacifist culture known as the “Law of Nunuku.”

Centuries later, a subsequent encounter between the two groups proved a catastrophe for the Moriori. Some 900 Mauri, displaced by conflict, sailed in two large ships to Rekohu, mounting a raid.

After the first ship attacked, Moriori elders held a tribal council to debate whether to fight back. Ultimately, they chose to uphold their tradition of peace.

Consequently, the Mauri began a genocidal campaign, nearly exterminating the Moriori and enslaving the survivors.

A Mauri warrior explained that it was done, “in accordance with our custom.”

This episode jumped out to me as I was pondering Proposition 50, the California proposal to fight gerrymandering with gerrymandering.

I’m not worried about massacre and enslavement (at least not yet), but rather the cost of sticking to one’s principles versus reacting to the reality that the rules of the game have changed.

Gerrymandering is anti-democratic. It promotes unfairness, discourages voter participation, and increases political polarization. It can too easily lead to distorted policies and less government accountability.

I voted against gerrymandering in California in 2008 and in 2010, supporting Prop 11 and Prop 20, which established independent commissions for drawing legislative and congressional districts.

The Princeton Gerrymandering Report Card shows the degree to which states have been gerrymandering. California is currently labeled a Grade B “better than average with some bias,” despite having established independent commissions.

California’s Prop 50 was created as a response to politicians in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, and other states redrawing voter district lines out of the normal decadal redistricting cycle to maximize their party’s advantage.

The legislatively drawn congressional district maps drawn by Prop 50 fall under the rubric of gerrymandering, but they are temporary. They would expire at the end of 2030, after which the redrawing authority returns to the independent Citizens Redistricting Commission.

Why would anyone who respects democracy support Prop 50? I propose that voting against this measure (or not voting at all) would be akin to laying down your weapons when the warriors are upon you, because the battle itself is distasteful.

As Joyce Vance argues in her new book, giving up is unforgivable in our fight to retain democracy. In this mini-election, the choice is to use the legal tools before us to keep our eyes on the prize of democracy.

It’s the political legwork Walt Whitman described in the 1800s:

“Did you, oh friend, suppose democracy is only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is of use there, that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruit in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between men, and their beliefs — in religion, literature, colleges, and schools — democracy in all public and private life.”

Let us use our YES vote to support the flower and fruit of democracy in public and private life.