Blackwood wrote:But, I have come to understand how a substantial number of people find all the political threads bothersome
Dale, I'm at an intellectual loss here. It is so simple: If they are bothered by them why do they read them? Nobody forces anyone to read a single political post or thread. Anyone is free to start threads of their interest.
I think this "they can ignore threads if they like" doesn't work past a certain point. I mean, people come here to read threads, not to ignore threads. If there are only a few threads to ignore, it's fine: those are easy to ignore (like a sticky political/religous thread), and the character of the place isn't changed. But once there are more than a certain number of political threads, I think just ignoring them ceases to be a workable option.
The reason is that there is a certain tone to (most) political threads that is serious, a bit antagonistic and argumentative, and as a result stressful and polarizing. I think a big part of the chiffboard has always been light-hearted banter and mutual supportive coddling---that sort of thing becomes harder merely because there are many antagonistic and argumentative threads (which may or may not be politicial... but often are; although you could observe the same effect when we had a stream of antagonistic threads about particular whistles or whistle makers).
There are threads all the time I find not really interesting, so guess what? I'm not reading them, it doesn't bother me, I don't force anyone to take them down, live and let live. So what is the motivation of people who claim to be bothered? It just doesn't make sense to me.
I think it's characteristic (and an illustration of what I just said about aggressive and antagonistic
tone), that you refuse to allow a distinction between an
appeal for voluntary self-restrain based on insight into a shared vision for the chiffboard on the one hand, and being "forced" on the other.
I suspect there is something else going on. Since these threads are obviously producing an emotional utility I would have to deduct that the people claiming to be bothered are obviously reading the political threads, which means they DO have an interest in them. I suspect they don't like what they read, meaning they don't agree with what is said politically. For whatever reason they either don't want to or can't argue the core of the discussion premise, but since they disagree they want to shut the discussion down, either by attacks, or claiming to be bothered by the discussion itself (which again raises my original point).
I may be wrong here, but right now this seems to be the most logical explanation to me, if there are others I'd like to hear them.
I think you should realize that you'll always find a "logical" answer you want to hear by supposing that people are incapable of telling you what they mean. If you feel that you know better and that others who tell you they are "bothered" really mean that they
disagree with your opinions, you'll never need to listen. No matter how many times people tell you "no, it's not that I disagree (or even care about your opinion), it's just I don't want that much political discourse one way or another" they'll always be wrong, right? Because
really, they do disagree, which
you realize but
they don't (or if they realize it, won't admit).
(The funny thing about it is that considering people incapble of saying what they mean is an odd basis for seeking to engage in discussions with them. And this is a discussion board, after all. This is just an aside.)
I would suggest two things: First, Actually listening to what people are trying to say to you. Second, accepting that things are often a matter of degree (that is, the following position is not nonsense: I don't mind people bumming a smoke off me (do it myself sometimes), but if I am giving away 15 smokes a day, it's too much; doesn't mean there is anything wrong with bumming smokes).
Steve
(Well someone had to say it - c'mon!) 
"It might be a bit better to tune to one of my fiddle's open strings, like A, rather than asking me for an F#." - Martin Milner
