This is a bit of a meta discussion, but there does seem to be a marked difference between what the moderators do (most recently, pruning entire threads) and what users using the "flag" button and down voting does.
The last couple of days have been particularly hellish, with many threads that descended into flame wars which drifted far away from whatever the original post was about.
I agree that there have been many threads that were far from being good faith discussions and turned into shouting matches with too many posts made in bad faith (such as citing bad sources that did not contain anything directly relevant to the point being argued, or links to sources that just repeated the original unsubstantiated allegation without presenting any evidence). Actions taken by users in these threads seemed to reflect preexisting biases rather than anything resembling a good faith debate.
With that I want to express my appreciation for the moderators who's job I do not envy but who are very necessary to keeping this site functioning in any way.