I would say that was true until recently (have basically been lurking for a decade), but this year in particular it feels like HN has gone full Reddit.

More and more topics somehow devolve into emotional political fights instead of intellectual debates.

I had some political fights here recently, but I also had some insights and genuine discussion even from viewpoints I find entirely unreasonable, which I think I wouldn't even have in real life.

The insanity of US politics has more and more real impacts and is impossible to ignore, sadly. It's the forest fires of the tech scene.