Will this forum remain Politics-free?

[Maxmars]

Curious if y'all have a plan regarding political discussions for this site.

Some love it.  Some hate it. 

or...maybe it's buried somewhere and I simply missed it.  

A fear of mine is that the "other" site will truly disappear and DI will see an influx of new members who bring their poison with them

((Just for the record, so there won't be any confusion, this is the response of MaxMars, a member, not some kind of positional or policy statement of Deny Ignorance, I am a Moderator, not a representative of anything other than our common efforts to help our discussions and community generally.  All DI staff, like you, have deep convictions, personal opinions, and relevant points regarding your question... this is mine))

In regards to the main question I can only expand on things I have previously indicated elsewhere...

• If by "politics" you mean discussing political philosophy, ideological rationale, or perhaps comparative social constructs, the answer swerves one way.
  
• If by "politics" you mean the structure and disposition of government authority and the scope of the organization of government, the answer might veer, but would be generally the same as above.
  
• If by politics, you mean the reverberations and echoes of the thespian-produced celebrity gameshow, it's "sides" and "teams" championed by paid pseudo-activists and attention whores... the answer should likely swerve negatively.
  
• If by politics you mean "politicians" I would suggest (if it were up to me,) No way. Cult of personality (celebrity) is all "cult." Pointless and empty, and utterly removed from useful reality, like worshipping an empty idol.  
  

We seek dialogue here, not proselytization, not persecution... it's hard enough to do without people who think "courage and enterprise" has anything to do with popularity contests and public relations.  Or that a slogan or tag-line actually conveys information.

The "politics" that most people recommend "not talking about" is particularly the latter. 

Discussions that follow and promote concepts of "heroes" and "villainy" (sort of like Hollywood..., imagine that?) Cheering for sides and launching impotent jabs and memes at one another while openly laughing and chortling over how clever we are, and how foolish the other person is for not agreeing....  in other words, the "theater" of politics... yeah that we can do without. (Those people do what they have done for MANY decades... ignore the problem and focus on a person to 'represent it.'  Bash that person and you posture as a virtuous hero 'fighting against a "problem."  But you're not.  It's all 'signal' and no progress.)

Save that crap for the "mainstream" laboratory experiments out there already... we didn't come here to "join the party of clown thespians" or "sway with the virtue signalers." 

ATS's one failing in my opinion, is that it gave way to 'political activism.'  'Political activism' is agitation with glorified bias...  We don't need that here... it already exists in abundance nearly everywhere else... and is serving no useful purpose towards discussion except to provide examples of how "not" to do it if you want to actually understand anything.

Just my 2 cents...