The guideline for comments I was leaning on to try to cut short what seemed like inevitable political ugliness:

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for.

For sure, but curious conversation on political topics is possible, and is not battle. It depends on whether one is posting thoughtfully or just trying to smite enemies.

That's the zone that we hope HN threads will inhabit when addressing politicized topics. Of course it's unstable and frequently deteriorates, hence all the moderation comments we end up having to post. But I don't know of a better alternative. As I explained at the links mentioned upthread, we can't ban all politics and we can't just let such threads run raw either.