My gut reaction is one of disappointment. I've enjoyed and appreciated the political discussion on HN, which has stood out from other political discussion on the web. My experience has been that the HN community respects facts and evidence-based discourse and that's been refreshing in an environment swirling with fake news.
Further, as a community interested in startups that often seeks "disruption" we need to think more about the social impact and ramifications of technology on society and on those who are disrupted.
Edit: I agree with the idea of holding the HN community to a high standard of civil dialog for political discussion or any topic like tabs vs spaces or language vs language. A tech-infused alternative to this thread might be, "Ask HN: Chat bot for managing / extinguishing flame wars?"