To me, the referenced discussion is the sort of context where if I'm outraged enough to write a rebuttal to someone's political views, I'm probably better off just downvoting...and so is the thread and so is HN.

There's no escalation. There's no feeding trolling behavior. There's no toehold on my future: I won't be curious about replies. It's cathartic. One click and I'm done expressing disagreement.