The timing of the article implies the subtext.

Maybe, but note that he's been in the U.S. (apparently continuously) for almost 40 years -- he's likely a Permanent Resident, if not a dual citizen (the article doesn't say). Referenced events in the article go back to November at least.

Sure, but it's fucking obvious and didn't need to be pointed out.

Look at the terrible thread it spawned.

I think it's also horrible that the article went into it at all. We're just fighting here as a result of it.

If they had left it at the person's name and good deeds, then we'd probably all be here discussing/praising that such a wonderful individual exists. No matter their race, gender, religion or nationality.

There's no leader without a follower, let's no underestimate the importance of the first reply.

How about you just don't engage with comments about politics if that's what you prefer? Don't ask people to silence themselves on perfectly relevant topics.

Partisan battle is destructive of what's relevant here. It consumes everything it touches and is not what HN is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Great. So let's just stick our heads in the sand and pretend that politics isn't relevant.

That doesn't follow. There's plenty of ground between these extremes, but it takes discipline to resist the strong winds blowing us there.

Wasn't there a rule against overtly political discussion on HN? Or did they get rid of that?

'dang summarized the results of the detox week and has made some recent comments. Here are some, with some identifiable snippets only so it's not a list of links. I encourage you to read the comments themselves. They don't all directly address this, but I think they all shed some light on the topic.

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13516969

There's no satisfying anybody about this: not the readers who want more politics, not the readers who want less, and certainly not the partisans on an issue.

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13522433

There's a lot more politics on HN right now than there usually is, which is appropriate since it reflects what's going on right now.

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13516969

When there's a deluge of political stories, as in the last couple days, users heavily flag most of them. But there have still been plenty of major threads spending plenty of time on the front page. That's the status quo for HN: most politics are off topic, but not all. It's a delicate balance and an important one. Letting politics overrun this site would kill it.

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13463480

On downsides of the Political Detox Week experiment: there are two comments in the thread.