All I’m saying is that politics is as intertwined with technology news as much as economics or religion or pop culture or anything else, and imho should be considered as equally valid sidebar conversations as the others.
If we can’t talk about things that make people uncomfortable, sicko people will take control of those very things and we will all suffer down the road. Better to just bite the bullet and let it all hang out.
From my understanding, your argument is a variation of "many/all things are politics and therefore politics cannot be disentangled from the topic" which I've seen others mention before. Sure, you can find ways to connect things to certain policies and politicians and then talk about that solely. Yes, economics becomes politics and recent tariffs are certainly policy-related. That doesn't mean we must discuss the political aspects of it.
The problem becomes that jumping to politics is very polarizing, identity-driven, and quickly drowns out curious discussion. The OP made a political statement, which won him easy points to push his comment to the top since there are so many who share the mindset of OP's comment. Any discussion about things not directly related to politics was pushed down. The effect happens across threads so frequently that no other conversation is left but politics. Those who don't want to talk politics spend time elsewhere, creating a feedback loop.
PG has a great essay about this here: https://paulgraham.com/identity.html
I was approaching the topic with a smidge of nuance and perhaps that was not clear, and I’m sorry.
Identity is definitely an issue in modern political culture, but I don’t know if PG can solve it anymore than you and I can. I think people just need to recognize and appreciate conjunctive nuances in their own opinions. Politics is identity AND culture AND religion etc etc. that’s my contention anyways.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply yourself!