People's views on politics (I am no exception) are often so deeply rooted in emotion that political topics often hit people more in the lizard brain and brings out the, um, "discouraged comments", than it encourages actual, polite discussion.

I dont really think so unfortunately. This is more of a general internet issue as opposed to an HN specific one. Of course, especially bad stuff tends to eventually get flagged and HN moderation is generally good at keeping things under control, but many of these threads seem to attract people with a specific view (not calling anyone out in particular, different threads will attract different groups and create echo chambers, as does anywhere in the internet) who will mass downvote what they oppose andunkike other threads, wll constructed comments cant wind up greyed out at the bottom and highly disingenuous ones at the top. I suppose the worst of these threads deal with things that may not neccesarily against the rules, but lower the quality regardless. It's not uncommon to see seemingly suspicious unsourced claims and stats upvoted if they confirm existing biases, for example, while this seems to be less common in other types of threads