Also, one reason this is getting shot down less hard than the atlantic is that it's a simple point being made in <60 seconds of reading. The atlantic would take >10 pages to do so.
This thought would be even more viable as a tweet.
Much more importantly though is what the content does to/with the community. Unless there's something truly remarkable about it, political content on HN generates terrible threads. Unlike embedded JIT compilers or linear algebra books, virtually everybody on HN can summon a strong opinion about routine political content, and a huge fraction of those opinions will piss someone else off. It's not a new phenomenon; it's why "politics and religion" is a cliche about what's out of bounds for civilized conversation.
Some political content is worth the thread drama. But this obviously doesn't clear that bar (and, again, I'm not suggesting Paul Graham thinks it does; he didn't submit it).