To me the strange thing is that they released this publicly. Okay, you're switching how you do 360 reviews, you're shutting down your DEI team, most companies wouldn't blog about these internal reorgs, they would just do it. It's not like the publicity seems all that great for them.
Why did Basecamp management say "no politics at work"? Well, coincidentally, a full one-third of Basecamp employees wanted to join the Diversity/Equity/Inclusion council. DEI appears to be precisely the politics DHH and Jason don't want Basecamp to think about.
And what is wrong with that? What the hell does DEI have to do with being competitive?
What you do brings value to a company. Not some immutable aspect of your being (race, color, sexual preference, etc.).
It's amazing to watch people who are supposedly anti-racist working feverishly to enact policies far more restrictive than Jim Crow laws ever were.
Anyone who tries to talk about anything other than merit is a charlatan. Hell Martin Luther King would be excoriated from Twitter for declaring that he dare dream that people be judged by they character and not their skin color.