I do feel like it can help to break the herd mentality thing of "if it's already downvoted, downvote it more" by making people think about why they've done it
I don't particularly care what the venture capitalists who own this website want me to do. Nor is it surprising that they don't want politics here. Political consciousness can only be bad news for the uber-wealthy.
There needs to be a separate mechanism for disagreement versus quality (affecting ranking). Both of these should be separate from flagging for moderation.
There is. Replying. If there already is a disagreeing reply, you can upvote that. Downvoting a constructive and well-written post just because you disagree is not justified.