[themacguffinman]

You don't have to care how apolitical it is but the partisan political nature of the post, which it starts and ends with, is why the HN thread is reacting to and discussing partisan politics. What makes it partisan is the shift from admonishing the government to justifying the partisan "irresponsible demagogues" that are currently brutalizing Minnesota by pointing to the blue-state government's slow prosecution of Somali immigrants.

When Charlie Hebdo was bombed and shot, I suppose what people should have been writing is a technical post about the poor quality of their work with tips on how to convey the same artistic point in a way that doesn't invite fanatics to bomb and shoot them, concluding that by not reining in their bad work they have ceded the field to people who will not be gentle in their proposals. Then you can comment things like "What do I care how apolitical it is? The art is what we should care about. That's what the post is about".

Edit: maybe a better analogy would be 9/11 with the US and Al Qaeda, where the US would be less innocent in your political sensibility than Charlie Hebdo and the dynamic I hypothesized was more real.

[tptacek]

The partisan politics of this story are off-topic for the site! We're supposed to be discussing the substance of the story!

[themacguffinman]

The partisan politics are in the story and part of its substance (and really how could it not be? what he's suggesting has substantial political consequences even setting aside the naked partisan jabs). The presence of technical details doesn't negate that, many polemics have technical details.