HN was never dedicated just to "programming and tech news"—not from the day it was named, and this has been in the first paragraph of the site guidelines since forever:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. So that's not the issue. The issue is that this site exists for the gratification of intellectual curiosity, and political battle not only threatens that but runs roughshod over it. I tried to make this clear in what I posted above.