>Second; CIA torture is American torture. It's important to discuss it, here and elsewhere, until it stops. But it's an off-limit topic. Not cool.
The purpose of this forum is to gratify intellectual curiosity. Righteous, even justifiable, anger about American war crimes or anything else doesn't satisfy that goal. Most political threads don't lead to any insights, rather they tend to degenerate into cynical piss-takes and partisan rancor. That may satisfy the impotent rage one feels about an unjust world or grant an endorphine hit by dunking on one's ideological enemies, but as far as content goes, they're usually an intellectual wasteland.
Hacker News isn't going to solve the world's problems. This is mostly a place for bored tech nerds to waste time avoiding the real world. If you want speech to lead to practical results, get involved in political activism.
>You may feel this isn't the proper venue, and dang may feel that way too. But there's no evidence that's the majority view; in fact there's quite a lot of evidence to the contrary.
For better or worse (I think it's both,) the majority doesn't rule here. Hacker News isn't a democracy, it's an oligarchy - rule by elites. The majority getting what it wants is practically the definition of Eternal September.
That's why downvotes and flags are weighted more heavily than upvotes, so the few can override the will of the many. And when the elite minority gets it wrong, the mods step in and start turning knobs.