Certainly skewed by looking at Italy, but most of what you're talking about would be familiar to cynics anywhere.
But "politics is the mind-killer" is more about the tribal affiliation aspects of associating oneself with a party.
But "politics is the mind-killer" is more about the tribal affiliation aspects of associating oneself with a party.
This is, in my opinion, a consequence of what I wrote above. You can't properly evaluate politicians and parties and you can't reliably predict their behavior, so you end up reacting emotionally and attaching yourself to one of the "teams". If you could reliably predict what a party will do if it wins the election, then you could evaluate and discuss the precise program without being "mind-killed". Since you generally cannot, you end up cheering for one of the team that you somewhat feel is more or less aligned with your position.
Summary: I propose we somewhat relax our stance on political speech on Less Wrong.
Related: The mind-killer, Mind-killer
A recent series of posts by a well-meaning troll (example) has caused me to re-examine our "no-politics" norm. I believe there has been some unintentional creep from the original intent of Politics is the Mind-Killer. In that article, Eliezer is arguing that discussions here (actually on Overcoming Bias) should not use examples from politics in discussions that are not about politics, since they distract from the lesson. Note the final paragraph:
So, the original intent was not to ban political speech altogether, but to encourage us to come up with less-charged examples where possible. If the subject you're really talking about is politics, and it relates directly to rationality, then you should be able to post about it without getting downvotes strictly because "politics is the mind-killer".
It could be that this drift is less of a community norm than I perceive, and there are just a few folks (myself included) that have taken the original message too far. If so, consider this a message just to those folks such as myself.
Of course, politics would still be off-topic in the comment threads of most posts. There should probably be a special open thread (or another forum) to which drive-by political activists can be directed, instead of simply saying "We don't talk about politics here".
David_Gerard makes a similar point here (though FWIW, I came up with this title independently).