Especially since internet discussions about police often turn into emotionally charged and hateful arguments, I think keeping the discussion focused on Reisse is a very good and respectful request.
I'm not saying that the U.S. is perfect, or that the EU isn't, but does anyone else remember when HN was for NEWS and not just an outgrowth of /r/politics?
I mean, obviously my comment won't change any of that, it's easy enough to see that the interest is there just by comparing comment count. But I do think it's unfortunate how much we have let politics poison the well here.
To put it bluntly Reisse was hit by an automobile by a criminal. Should the police have pursued the suspect through a crowded city the way that they did? No, however no one here was at the scene; maybe they HONESTLY believed they could end the ordeal without a lengthy chase and without the suspect getting away. That's a judgement call that every law enforcement officer deals with from time to time; with human nature telling us that we can't be correct all the time.
If you people want politics here, I guess you'll get it. But you won't get politics and a quality site about hacking and startups.
Can you point to a single story since the inception of Hacker News that quite obviously involved the intersection of hacker/startup culture with the rest of society where politics were not discussed? What is any discussion about wealth or economics if not politics? Is it a vanishingly small percentage of PG's essays that express a strong political opinion?
As far as I'm concerned, discussing politics as they relate to hacker culture is on topic. Discussing the Boston Marathon bombing, not so on-topic, but nevertheless people here had interesting things to say from a hacker perspective. I'll be the first to agree that political extremism is aggravating, but the solution to political extremism is not the avoidance of politics altogether.
On the contrary, avoidance of all politics is a wonderful individual solution to political extremism. Which is why so many "normal" people refuse to get involved at all, which is why all of us "normal" people end up so surprised every 2 years over a bunch of reactionary representatives being elected.
At least on HN you were able to have reasoned political discourse, which is far less aggravating. Even where I disagree with others I love being exposed to angles I hadn't considered, cultural nuances that might explain why something would work in the EU that wouldn't work in the U.S. (and vice versa), and all of that.
But from what I can tell even on HN we're shifting farther and farther away from that into the creationist mold of "I have decided what the answer must be, now I need only twist the facts to suit". Even where the answer that's decided on is actually right, that's no way to conduct a 'debate'.
Who ever said anything about that?
I'm quite interested, and in my own way, involved in politics. I also follow bicycle racing with a passion, for that matter. But I don't think either one belongs on this particular web site.
I don't think you mean simply election politics, so my assumption is that you mean any kind of debate over government policy. In this example it would be a debate over the US government policy of pursuing suspects in high speed car chases.
I can understand how these kinds of things are off topic in the general case (Istanbul protests, Boston marathon, etc.), but are you saying they're still off topic when there's a fairly clear connection to a hacking / startup story? Are the discussions about rent control in SF off topic, for instance?
My belief is that there's a grey zone where considered discussion of the pros and cons is okay, even good. For instance, I wasn't even aware that there were debates about high speed chases at all, so for me this was something new and interesting. Most of the community wrecking I've seen has happened due to in-fighting and drama, but yes political mud fights are a common enough precursor to that, because they encourage people to hold grudges and take sides, at least in my experience.
Considered discussion is welcome on HN. Unfortunately there are some topics where considered discussion is unlikely. Abortion; circumcision; Israel / Palestine; gun control; etc etc. It'd be fantastic if there was a site like HN where these topics could be discussed, especially if that site fostered calm rational discussion.
But these discussions too often deteriorate into noise, and worse into wider ranging down-voting and derailments in other threads.