Maybe someone can enlighten me.

Took the bait.

I don't freak out when someone brings up something automotive, or sports related, or their favorite whisky, but for some reason politics is the third rail.

@hifiguy42 

The reason politics became a problem here was a dynamic tag team of users who would be triggered by the slightest mention of, say, tariffs, and proceeded to turn perfectly good threads into feces-flinging fests.

This has nothing to do with being off-topic. You can mention cars or bourbon all day long and nothing happens. Politics has become the 3rd rail because people made it.

@devinplombier, agreed!

@devinplombier 

But the issue remains, how do we want to handle it?  Under the current rules, if two or more posters have a reasonably polite political discussion, that’s allowed within the posted rules.  If they resort to name-calling and other personal invective, the moderators can and should shut that down, and that too is within the rules.  But to preemptively remove a post because somebody somewhere might disagree with an expressed sentiment, that is not within the rules (other that the catchall part that says moderators can do whatever they want when they want), and more importantly, seems completely unnecessary, bordering on nanny-statism.