I am deriding the sort of discourse that topics like this usually produce, not the people making the arguments. It's certainly possible that the public debate over kids' football will largely be apolitical and civil and productive, such things do happen, but I'm predicting that it won't be.
Pretty sure we're talking past one another here. Thought experiment: if I describe a topic in the forest, and nobody is there to hear it, am I still being divisive?
One wonders why you would say divisive things aloud in an otherwise lonely forest. Saying something hurtful, offensive, divisive, unnecessary... is problematic regardless of the size of the audience. You can see that the original "divisive" comment [1] on this thread sparked a large response.
It's true that a HackerNews thread has a lower global-political impact than, say, a presidential tweet or a Supreme Court ruling. But that shouldn't prevent anyone from thinking through their HN comments. Words matter.
The comment we're both responding to [1] was unnecessarily divisive -- which partially obscured the commenter's otherwise good points (that team-thinking can obscure rational thinking). And that's particularly important on a website like HackerNews.
Original divisive comment: "[Has football joined the list of] values that separate members of the Red Tribe from the Blue Tribe? Football is a red-state pastime." [1]
The comment you responded to: "You're creating [divisive] discourse [by posing divisive questions]." [2]
I think your response, pointing out that a comment on HN usually won't "create" a nationally divisive discourse [3], is missing the point. If you look at the rest of the thread you can see that it created a divisive debate within HackerNews. I think the point you're missing is that divisive language creates divisions wherever it is used and it's worthwhile to point that out -- even if you think you're only talking to yourself.
I once accidentally started an argument at a party about whether to let the toilet paper hang over the front of the roll or the back by mentioning how funny it was that people would argue over something so trivial.
(It's extra-funny because all right-thinking people know that it's obviously better to have it hang over the front of the roll. Sheesh!)
> I am deriding the sort of discourse that topics like this usually produce
You have become what you hate - you are the one who introduced the subject. Its like "Has anyone compared $TOPIC to Nazis yet? This subject has a tendency to be Godwinned".
I think a distinction can be drawn between bringing up on HN the ability of an issue to become not just divisive but divisive along political lines, and the issue actually becoming divisive in society at large. Here we can discuss if it could be a political issue, what that would mean, what could be done about it, etc. That seems quite different that a discussion (on HN or elsewhere) wherein it has become a political issue.
Maybe we should stop pretending we all start in the middle and then get pulled to the extremes as we are exposed to either (un)biasing information. Maybe we should assume that all wells have already been poisoned (just a saying not a value judgement), science or religion, figure out which team already claimed you and defend your tribe.
I made a falsifiable prediction about reality. If I'd written an essay on Medium that ostensibly argued for one side's view, but which did so in a condescending and divisive manner more likely to show what a clever guy I am than to actually persuade anyone on the other side, then I would've become what I hate.
But you did take one side's view in a condescending and divisive manner. The side you took is the one that divides people into a Red Tribe and a Blue Tribe, ascribes stereotypical views to each, and makes lists of attributes to categorize people into one of these two tribes.
People are quite a bit more complex than that, and these kinds of arbitrary binary divisions get in the way of finding common ground.
It's a bit of a strange prediction. If we take boxing as a model of a formerly massively-popular sport now considered excessively dangerous, we can observe that minority (Latino and African-American) participation remains high. These demographics are generally not considered part of the Red Tribe coalition. If football follows the same trend, it will be a weak tribal correlate at best.
Not trying to argue, but just curious: was boxing as big as football is now in the US? I'm not much into sports in general, and I wasn't around when boxing was big (or just completely missed it), so I'm lacking context.
Boxing was the football of the 1920s, with saturation radio and newspaper coverage, and became the top sport of the early broadcast TV era. It has been declared dead or dying at regular intervals despite being a solid performer into the pay-per-view era. Like football, it would probably be somewhat safer if its "protective" gear was reduced or redesigned.
In general, I think people care about their kids, and will have different levels of risk sensitivity.
http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/page/popwarner/pop-warn...