Specifically, it was the fact that my family members had this exact attitude in ex-Yugoslavia circa 1991 that caused a lot of avoidable trouble for us (which some other people I know indeed avoided thanks to their better insight into the situation).
Elsewhere you said:
I lived through a time and place -- late 1980s and early 1990s in ex-Yugoslavia -- where most people were blissfully unaware of the storm that was just beyond the horizon, even though any cool-headed objective observer should have been able to foresee it.
I'd be interested in hearing more about this sometime; all I know is the western media depictions of the Yugoslav wars, it would be interesting to know how things looked from the inside preceding them.
Well, I could write a lot about it, but I think I've underscored the aspects relevant for this topic well enough already. If you have some more specific questions, feel free to PM me.
There is a tendency to downvote articles and commentaries with a political subtext with a remark on how politics is the mind-killer. I completely understand that nobody wants his mind to be killed, however, I disagree on the employed methods. I don't think anybody can really afford to ignore politics. It's a fact about any group of even a handful of people. Thus instead of shunning politics I think it's better to build one's rational defenses. Understanding that politics is a problem is only the first step. If you stop there, there will always be a big part of life where you are not rational. Therefore I suggest that, as long as it doesn't get out of hands, there should always be room for political discussions if not on the main site at least in the discussion section.