so if you want to talk about a hot-button issue (or to talk about a more general point for which the hot-button issue provides a good illustration) it's actually usually better to be explicit about what that issue is.

Yes. Explicit is good. Be clear to the reader.

If the point was a general principle to be illustrated by use of particular real world examples, don't obfuscate the examples by turning them into hypotheticals.

Use them, and be clear you're using them as illustrations, and that the goal isn't to talk about the particulars of the political issue.

Or, just make up a true hypothetical. A hypothetical a lot like a real world issue leaves an uncertainty in the reader on whether we're setting up a hypothetical for a general point or we're talking about a real world particular in general terms.

Political examples are probably bad to use for general purposes regardless, as the interpretations of those events differ between people, so that communication with your reader is made more difficult, and your inferences about his map, and his about yours, and yours about his about yours, ... make for a ton of uncertain inference about what is being communicated.

Two interacting sources of inferential distance between the reader and your point. Probably a bad idea.