These political discussions on HN are awkward, and I wish they'd stop.
It's not because political discussions aren't important, they are, but because I don't think this is a useful place to have them.
Counterarguments are self-censored, because any moderates calmly pointing out hyperboles tend to be downvoted by the more passionate participants in the discussion.
With the moderates bowing out, online voting systems quickly gel into two extremes, maybe a far right and a far left. That's not sustainable though, one side quickly gets bigger and wins. The losing side now is best off self-censoring, because why get downvoted when you can just comment on other topics? You eventually get a political monoculture representing one extreme, with no voices of opposition or moderation.*
No moderation system has yet promoted any useful political dialogue, because you can't convince the 5% of people who are most emotional to rate argument quality independently of personal beliefs.
That's why, in general, I'm opposed to the political pulpit of HN, even for positions I agree with. It's a bad medium for good discussions on issues of significant controversy.
* (What's admittedly tricky is sometimes a political monoculture is the correct result. If someone made arguments on behalf of the KKK, we don't need a full and fair debate providing a false equivalence between both sides. One side is just wrong. The problem is, with politics, everyone thinks they're arguing against someone else who is just wrong, just like the KKK. There's no objective way to determine whether or not both sides of a discussion hold merit worthy of a full debate, or whether we should just downvote one side out of the discussion before it leaves the gate.)