[claytongulick]

That's like saying "there's no way to remove emotion from a conversation". Of course not, emotion is always present. But adults practice emotional regulation and work hard to prevent it from interfering with relationships (i.e. not screaming when you're angry).

Sure, politics colors many people's worldview and it's hard for them to put it in a box - that means we shouldn't try?

In a better world, we'd focus on critical thinking, being less sure of yourself, openness and active listening. We'd teach people to work to think objectively and to identify the differences between technical opinions, emotional and political ones.

We wouldn't say "well, this is hard, so let's just do whatever".

[bonoboTP]

You can try, but it only works when you have shared values. When deep values are contested it's harder to put differences aside. For example, I don't want to bring up hot button issues, but some years ago there was a wave of politics entering pull requests and mailing lists where software is developed. Many just wanted to keep the politics out. They didn't realize there is no way of playing politics by not playing. So they got outplayed by those who know what politics is. There's a threshold for everybody. By saying that you can neatly box it away, you implicitly admit that the thing is not very important or concerning to you. But instead of daring to say that outloud you just say let's not do politics.

Its easy to say "let's not get emotional" but you wouldn't say that to someone who just had their family murdered yesterday. There is a threshold. Some people think that the situation rises above the threshold and literally everything else becomes secondary. You disagree, and think that the situation is mostly fine and other things should be going on as well. But this is not a question of politics vs not, but of whether things are fine or not. It's fine to think that things are fine. I'm talking very meta here. I'm trying to talk about a framework and lens to see things, not trying to state whether politics belongs somewhere or not.