My politics generally align with what you call the 'one accepted political dogma', but I have to admit that workers who overtly signal their activism over actually doing the work they're paid for are supremely annoying. In fact, amongst the silent majority they probably do more harm than good for their cause.

What is "politics"? Where do you draw the line?

"I'm going to pick up my kid at school this afternoon, because otherwise he has to spend over an hour on the bus. It would be nice if they had more school buses so kids wouldn't have to deal with such long bus rides."

"Excuse me, Becky, but you cannot be discussing local politics in the workplace. That's a fireable offense, you know."

Your comment begs the question: what is politics?

Discouraging people from voting for Trump? Pushing for equal pay across genders? Believing the business should do more to diversify its hiring? Pushing for transgender bathrooms? Being opposed to working on defense contracts?

For some people, these conversations are “obvious facts”, not politics.

What is religion? For some people the Ten Commandments and the need to follow the Lord Jesus Christ are facts. It's the very creator of the universe ordering things! Or the laws in the Quran are undisputed truths for some, not some wishy-washy matter of debate.

How did we ever manage to get past that?

A lot of tribal, identity-based politics is much like religion in this way. For the believers it's simply truth. For outsiders it's just one faith out of many that you should keep private in a secular society.

All of the above are highly political. There are people who feel very strongly on either side of those positions.

Too much politics is the stuff that gets one fired. After a few iterations the calibration might be reached.

The response by DHH and Jason wasn't really to ban politics though, it was that only their political stance was acceptable. As a result of the policy, it's not that Basecamp had no opinion on the names list - instead, the outcome was that they did have a stance that it was bad, but not bad enough that you could link it to systemic racism.

"No politics" is a smokescreen. What it means in reality, here or anywhere else its instituted, is that "leadership decides the acceptable position on political issues."