Wow, that thread! Am I the only one who thinks this site probably doesn't need an Off-Topic section? What a disaster and wasteland that section seems to be.
I’ve said countless times that it needs to separate the off topic section with the political section. Those of us that firmly live by the “low information diet” as MMM preaches, shouldn’t have to wade through lists of political BS threads to see some regular “off topic” posts.
Sure, you can just not click them (which i typically don’t) but I try and eliminate the temptation of engaging in political discussions altogether.
I've been a moderator in other (non-FIRE) internet communities, and in one community I deliberately created a separate space for political discussion there with the specific intent of allowing political discussion to occur, but keeping it out of other areas whose primary purpose is not political. It serves the useful purpose of keeping overt political debates - and the emotions/animosity that sometimes accompanies them - compartmentalized, and allows those who wish to avoid them, to do so while those who wish to debate, can. People that choose to come that that forum go there knowing that their views will be challenged and debates may get... heated. Most of the time it works pretty well, at least as far as keeping political debate in its own space(Then again, I created the space for that purpose, so take my opinion with a grain of salt).
One tricky aspect of these forums is that the subject matter here is heavily skewed toward financial topics, and as such some subjects that were not originally intended to be political brush up against political matters. Tax policy impacts financial planning, as does health insurance policy - so it's hard to completely avoid discussions of politics and policy. As such, some threads are started with non-political intentions but end up veering into political territory. In such cases, having a "political debate" forum that these threads can be moved to may still be productive, but the moderators here have a much tougher task than those on other forums where the intended subject matter is obviously non-political.