But this decision is the epitome of privilege. To enter a space thinking "I'm not going to think about politics" is to be someone whose sheer existence in that space isn't a political statement in and of itself. And for many, such a space is "The United States", "The Tech Community", "HN", or whatnot.
Saying "We're going to forget y'all for a week" is... just... fucking... terrible. And whoever conceived of it should be fired on the spot.
Someone should lose their job for coming up with the idea in an attempt to increase the signal to noise ratio of the site?
The "someone" I'm referring to here almost certainly, in reality, isn't one person. And the "entity" who did this certainly should lose their position -- it's a privilege we've granted them for far too long.
That's your choice. The importance of Dang and the other moderators to this forum astronomically dwarfs the importance of individuals like yourself or myself.
And no one here is solving how to put dinner on the table for anyone when ranting about Trump, Clinton, BLM, KKK, inequality, immigration, or any of dozens of other political hot topics. It's just childish your-team-vs-my-team railing against each other. You can find that sort of thing endlessly on other forums and I resoundingly applaud the HN team for taking a step to experiment with avoiding the waste of everyone's time for a week.