[aswerty]

This is the second political post I've seen sky rocket on HN this morning. I assume a mod intervened on the last one since it disappeared rather quickly.

Do we really want to start political discussions in HN? Politics creates enough friction between people in real life let alone discussions with strangers over the internet.

[estsauver]

I think so.

Communities that aren't willing to deal with this tragedy that's rapidly unfolding in America aren't communities I want to be a part of.

[badwulf]

This is a tech community, we aren't supposed to deal with politics.

What tragedy are you talking about? I think what's happening is great, Europe should start embracing a similar policy(assuming you are talking about the refugee ban).

Here is a tip: whenever you feel overly sensitive about something in politics, ask yourself the question: why did this happen? how did we get here? and look up people who have an opinion opposite to yours, not just the ones who feel like you.

[hueving]

That's the problem with political posts. One side sees it as good, one side sees it as a tragedy, and then the remaining 80%+ of the people are subjected to the bickering.

[diyorgasms]

If 80% of people don't care then that's even more reason to have these discussions. There is no excuse for disengagement at a time like this. Disinterest and silence are allies of oppression.

[hueving]

How exactly is watching one group of people call another group racists over and over going to help someone engage? Particularly if they are a citizen of Hong Kong?

[aedron]

I think it straddles a fine line. Some things are so important that it is worth it to get the HN community's take on it. Is Donald Trump one of those things? I tend to think not. I guess the fact that this was posted by Jeff Atwood tips the balance towards it being accepted.

[pokemon-trainer]

Are we supposed to ignore that our coworkers from these countries can now no longer visit their families or leave the country? Seems a lot more relevant than a point release in some JS framework IMO.

[gcp]

HN has been full of political and sociological discussion forever.

[otikik]

Somebody said it very well in an article not long ago: "Computers are knowledge. Knowledge is power. And power is politics".

[Quarrelsome]

ye, this place is for talking about tech or problems and solutions to problems. This is just soapboxing.

[rimantas]

a.k.a. keeping one's head in the sand.

[Quarrelsome]

its more diplomatic than that. I have very strong opinions I just choose where I present them and where I dont. We're engineers, we're here to share with other engineers and solve problems irrespective of the other engineers beliefs, political alignments or whims. I would not want to turn this place into another spot for activism, there are other fine spots for that sort of thing.

Lets talk about code and business please.

[ubernostrum]

OK. For a while there this weekend, some of your employees/co-workers who had been legally present and working in the United States couldn't gain re-entry to the United States if they happened to have been traveling.

But of course that's "just politics". Nobody should talk about it on HN. No business impact whatsoever. Nope. None. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Nada. A goose egg. No idea why that suddenly got some tech execs to get up and go out and express their carefully-vetted couched opinion that perhaps hypothetically it might from some perspectives be worth considering the possibility of expressing a hint of tentative questioning as to whether the best policy might not be being pursued.

Here's a hint: there is no separating out the "politics". Whether you realize it or not, what you're really doing is trying to separate "things which I perceive to directly personally affect me right at this moment" (on-topic) from "things which I perceive to directly and personally affect other people and not me, or which I perceive to not currently affect me" ("politics", off-topic). The problem with this, of course, is that for every thing that affects you, there'll be another person who is or perceives him/herself to be unaffected and declare your issue "politics". And for every issue you declare "politics" there'll be another person who is or perceives him/herself to be affected and dispute it with you.

[Quarrelsome]

I'm not from America. This doesn't directly impact me. I am interested in the outcome and I post in my communities about the topic with _strong_ opinions, much stronger than you even manage here. Those communities are clearly labelled "POLITICS".

This is hacker news. We have a job to do, irrespective of what the electorate choose we build solutions to make the world better. We inform each other as to what problems are spawning from the political spectrum and how to mitigate those in our solution building. We fix problems. What we tend not to do is devolve into political activism as that is an orthogonal interest to our skills as engineers and most importantly is often requiring of solutions that run counter to our skill set.

Lets leave the politics aside and stop pushing soap box crap like this to the top of the page please.

[matt4077]

Engineers are people, my friend.

One of the lessons learned from history is the danger of professionals considering their actions to be removed from politics and morals, and their jobs to be just implementing whatever their boss wants from them (c. f. Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil": http://amzn.to/2kMX4Wd)

[TorKlingberg]

This a blog post by a well know person in tech on a blog that is normally about tech. It is not like the front page is suddenly full of op-eds.