Same here. This is one of those topics where the Hacker News community has no particular insight, and the comments will surely be the same political cesspool as anywhere else (prove me wrong, please!).
Here's my take: I'm torn between agreeing that these stories don't really belong on HN and thinking that the comments here are the only ones I ever see that still don't immediately devolve into ugly name-calling. I wish I knew of a decent political forum, but I only know of echo-chambers on one side or the other and un-civil cesspools.
The politics conversations here aren't great, but they usually have some input from both sides and way less incivility than anywhere else I know of.
After a couple hours I have to concede the discussion here is more civil than the average. When I wrote my comment there was still a bunch of chaff but now it's been either downvoted, or the replies sparked a decent discussion.
It's because everyone is entitled to their opinion and they haven't necessarily done the work necessary to come to a nuanced understanding of the world.
Take a random visitor to HN and ask him or her what they think of the changes in Golang's garbage collector. Most wouldn't know what those changes have been, when they happened, or the outcome of those changes. Even the few that had a beginning of an understanding like me, would know that there are probably important details that are missing from understanding it so we keep our thoughts to ourselves. Then you'll get the like dozen or so guys that really understand it talk about it and the other 99.8% of us get to read and learn. What you think about the person in the Oval Office isn't something that you need academic or professional rigor to have a viewpoint on. It's part celebrity and mixed up with political ideology so people aren't usually shown that they don't actually understand what is going on. Plus, HN is popular in USA, Russia, Israel, Germany, Canada, Japan - each with their own viewpoints and lack of shared cultural understanding.
