How to handle politics on HN is a hard question. We've worked out an answer over the years that derives from the site guidelines, is not rooted in any particular politics, and so far seems to be stable.
To see why it's a hard question, look at the two extremes of the solution space. One would be to ban every topic that you find politically provocative—i.e. that anybody finds politically provocative, since there's no reason to privilege one user over others. That would exclude most stories that get posted here—certainly everything about economics, history, philosophy, literature, city planning, etc., but also most stories about business and industry. Even many stories that appear purely technical would have to go. Probably everything would, once people got done being provoked by what remained. As some are fond of pointing out, everything is political when you get down to it.
The other extreme would be to allow every political topic and all escalations and flamewars. That would turn this place into scorched earth and kill it as a site for intellectual curiosity, its mandate (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
Since both extremes are impossible for HN, we need to draw a line somewhere. Where should it be? If we're optimizing for intellectual curiosity, we have to cast a wide net, because curiosity likes to meander. Any topic that supports intellectual curiosity is ok, even if it has political overlap. The topics that aren't ok are the ones that are (a) purely political, (b) purely sensational, (c) have usually turned into flamewars in the past.
What about stories that don't gratify your curiosity? Well, that's always the case, in the sense that no one likes every story and no story is liked by everyone. It suffices to gratify curiosity for some segment of the audience. If you run into one that doesn't work for you, there are plenty of others to read. If you run out, the 'past' link in the top bar is guaranteed to find popular threads that you missed. And if a submission really breaks the site guidelines, you can flag it. What's not ok is to start posting comments in the thread from a place of provocation rather than curiosity. That's not in the spirit of HN and the guidelines ask you not to.
All these concepts require interpretation, so any line we draw is fuzzy. Other moderators might make different calls. But the OP is obviously on topic by that standard, and while I understand how it can appear that we apply the rules selectively, I'd caution against leaping to a belief in moderation bias motivated by secret political preferences (inevitably opposed to your own of course! See https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (later edit: and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870)). All political sides get moderated and/or not moderated at times. When it comes to politics, the mods do something for everyone to dislike—which unfortunately distorts how people perceive moderation (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
If you see a case that violates this standard, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything on HN. The second-likeliest explanation is that we thought it over and came up with some reason that is based on the site guidelines. Sometimes that leads to counterintuitive places. People are always welcome to ask.
Obviously, I disagree with many things about the approach HN has taken, but of course it is your site, you can do as you want.
For starters, if you say people can just skip things that don't satisfy their curiosity, I don't see why the same wouldn't apply to political controversies. I can understand if you want to moderate the "root articles" (the once that are listed on the homepage), but why do you care about the comments? If people discuss something, obviously it interests them (strikes their curiosity). What does it matter if they make a 10000 comment thread about it? I think you have some sort of algorithmic counter measures against long threads, which does nothing but enrage (presumably based on some heuristic PG once made, when he felt long comment threads signal flame wars)
Ultimately it seems to me all about the people you attract here to vote on things. I've just tried to read that article about Atwood, and it is entirely too long-winded for me. If HN had been founded by some famous literary professor, you would probably get only submissions like that, and nothing about technology or science. But it was founded by PG and now it is associated with YCombinator, so it draws a different crowd.
Just saying I don't think the "curiosity" rule is really what makes HN, it is the people you manage to attract.
And to that I personally can say, I wouldn't mind some other user ripping into me in comments for some political or other reasons. I do mind HN itself telling me I am not wanted here , which it does in so many ways.
Of course, again, that is your right to do, as it is your site. It just makes me sad (unsurprisingly), having been on HN since the early days. And ultimately it does seem to boil down to political opinions, even if you don't consciously target certain opinions above others, as you claim.
It matters what people post in the comments because the comments very much affect what sort of people HN manages to attract. You seem to be treating these two things as independent, but they are intensely interdependent.
That's why we keep asking you to follow the site guidelines. It's not just because your individual comments get better when you do that. It's also because the feedback loops involved (the effects of comment quality on the community) are large and existential for HN.
To see why it's a hard question, look at the two extremes of the solution space. One would be to ban every topic that you find politically provocative—i.e. that anybody finds politically provocative, since there's no reason to privilege one user over others. That would exclude most stories that get posted here—certainly everything about economics, history, philosophy, literature, city planning, etc., but also most stories about business and industry. Even many stories that appear purely technical would have to go. Probably everything would, once people got done being provoked by what remained. As some are fond of pointing out, everything is political when you get down to it.
The other extreme would be to allow every political topic and all escalations and flamewars. That would turn this place into scorched earth and kill it as a site for intellectual curiosity, its mandate (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
Since both extremes are impossible for HN, we need to draw a line somewhere. Where should it be? If we're optimizing for intellectual curiosity, we have to cast a wide net, because curiosity likes to meander. Any topic that supports intellectual curiosity is ok, even if it has political overlap. The topics that aren't ok are the ones that are (a) purely political, (b) purely sensational, (c) have usually turned into flamewars in the past.
What about stories that don't gratify your curiosity? Well, that's always the case, in the sense that no one likes every story and no story is liked by everyone. It suffices to gratify curiosity for some segment of the audience. If you run into one that doesn't work for you, there are plenty of others to read. If you run out, the 'past' link in the top bar is guaranteed to find popular threads that you missed. And if a submission really breaks the site guidelines, you can flag it. What's not ok is to start posting comments in the thread from a place of provocation rather than curiosity. That's not in the spirit of HN and the guidelines ask you not to.
All these concepts require interpretation, so any line we draw is fuzzy. Other moderators might make different calls. But the OP is obviously on topic by that standard, and while I understand how it can appear that we apply the rules selectively, I'd caution against leaping to a belief in moderation bias motivated by secret political preferences (inevitably opposed to your own of course! See https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (later edit: and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26148870)). All political sides get moderated and/or not moderated at times. When it comes to politics, the mods do something for everyone to dislike—which unfortunately distorts how people perceive moderation (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
If you see a case that violates this standard, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything on HN. The second-likeliest explanation is that we thought it over and came up with some reason that is based on the site guidelines. Sometimes that leads to counterintuitive places. People are always welcome to ask.
If that's not enough, there are plenty of prior explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so.... Take a look, and if there's still something I haven't addressed, I'd be curious to know what it is.