That's an example of the immune system working correctly. I commented on it yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25751600.
It would be a disaster if follow-up opinion pieces on inflammatory topics didn't get flagged. The front page would consist mostly of those, and they'd all turn into flamewars. The quieter, interesting submissions on unexpected topics—the lifeblood of HN—would get choked out, and HN would suffocate.
You may be under the misimpression that HN is a place for discussing the most important current events. It's not. The most important current events are far, far more important than almost everything on HN's front page. That's because HN is a different kind of site. Not every place on the internet needs to be the same, and I think there's room for one (at least!) which is dedicated to intellectual curiosity.