The parent comment made no claim that they were going to flag the post without reading it. Just that it was a controversial post, so it's less clear if good discussion would evolve from it. (So I give them the benefit of the doubt that they did read it.)

You nailed the problem, this needs to stop.

Funnily enough I'm getting pretty actively downvoted. It's sad... I always thought of Hacker News as a place to have friendly discussion.

You accused the person of contemplating flagging the submission without reading the article. Where do they say they didn't read it first?

Instead of downvoting, we need to understand each other better. So many centrists and right-wing views are shunned. I don't agree with them and if they're obviously racist/flamebait, we shouldn't feed it, but if someone has a dissenting view about liberal/progressive stances, we should listen to them. Ask them why they think that way. That's so much more interesting to me.