First: Indeed, Eugene violated civilized norms, and was booted. What a strange coincidence that it was an unprogressive fellow that got booted. That's as much evidence for my thesis as against.

Second: Ah, so AA saying that people should attend to their game is being "overly political". Seems a stretch. I guess for some people everything is political, but if so, complaining that a post is political makes little sense.

Third: I thought voting a person down was a no no. That was what made Eugine's downvoting a crime, no? I thought we were supposed to be downvoting a post based on it's own content. I note that the response I received "I would like him to shut up and go away" in justification of the downvoting. Where are the villagers and their pitchforks calling for banning the miscreant?

but I'm pretty sure that if someone was throwing into comments asides about how the Republican party was racist or sexist, or similar remarks, I'd downvote that person and they'd end up in a pretty similar situation.

Your certainty is misplaced. I was involved in exactly the kind of case you posit, where someone basically cast conservatives as in league with Lucifer, and he was upvoted to the moon. When I called him on it, I was downvoted to oblivion. He had the decency to engage the issue, and eventually agreed that he had unfairly maligned conservatives, and hadn't really realized he had done it at the time. Would you be so surprised if you had been one of the people upvoting his original post with it's slur against conservatives?

Fourth: "comment's quality and general politics made it not good content."

As for the quality, it was the clear expression of an idea relevant to winning that you don't hear so often. I call it a good point. It is the Open Thread after all. I don't expect dissertations here.

As for the "general politics" - what would that be? It's political to suggest that your interpersonal skills have a large effect on your life, so you should see about getting good at them? We shouldn't talk about interpersonal skills?