This.
I will, for the life of me, never understand why people can't just "change the channel".
Someone mentioned just put people on ignore, I refuse to do that because as much as I despise politics I do respect quite a few people on here for their knowledge in pool, I would hate to miss that because I don't believe in their political beliefs.
That being said, forums become families and I enjoy going to a "general" section to see what other members think of this or think of that (maybe someday I'll post a picture of my shaved legs) but going to NPR and seeing 8 of the first 10 threads are about politics gets really tiring. There are a few people that enjoy those conversations and they enjoy back and forth banter; however, it's all that BS that prevents people from sticking around in NPR - and if people aren't sticking around they're leaving.
I've been around the block on more forums than most people knew existed and have never seen the amount of personal attacks, politicizing of posts, etc....ever. And it's ALL politically motivated here.
The benefit of having a dedicated political forum is you can fully enforce a zero-tolerance policy OUTSIDE of that forum. Until that happens it will simply be impossible to enforce no politics anywhere else.
And for those arguing that politics drives the NPR section, great, then start a politics forum and let it grow, then others can enjoy the NPR forum without having to worry about someone personally attacking them or making it political.