[dang]

It's a matter of degree. The OP has flamebait aspects, but it also has substantive, on-topic material. Obviously we're not going to treat all such stories as off-topic just because some people make flamewars out of them. If we did that, people could kill any story just by flaming enough.

"Blah blah blah what about nurses fuck you", on the other hand (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13241873), has no merit as a subtopic at all—not after the number of times we've all endured it. I trust that most HN readers understand that when we make a call like this, it isn't about ideology, but about not subjecting the community to tedium.

> your side of the ideological narrative

We hear this often enough from a minority of readers who feel strongly about ideology. However, it varies (quite reliably in fact) with the ideology of the beholder. To me that seems like evidence of cognitive bias at work, since it's same body of moderation decisions being interpreted in conflicting ways.