[ttepasse]

Knuth in the wake of the Iraq war and the Abu Ghraid crimes asked some "Infrequently Asked Questions" which are of course highly political. He kept this page linked on top of his home page. And in 2022 he wrote a postscript with more political questions.

https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/iaq.html

[drstewart]

I didn't ask about Knuth.

I asked about the book. Everything is inherently HIGHLY political, thus this should be an easy question.

[strogonoff]

Perhaps you are exaggerating. At least, my original comment was “not talking about politics is a political position”, not “everything is HIGHLY political”.

However, yes, some people would say that, for example, almost everything is political to some degree. I don’t know if I agree with them entirely. In case of Knuth, they would probably say that the choice of what to write about in the book (just like the choice of whether to be a computer scientist in the first place) cannot be divorced from his politics. Like the choice of someone to work in nuclear science or environmental science or “anything that pays good money” is informed by individual’s political positions. “Politics is water” is a great metaphor.