No doubt there's a socio-physiological function to saying bad things about the rich and powerful. It feels good, and you can say literally anything in that genre and get applause (on HN, upvotes). So it's inevitable. But it goes against the mandate of this site, which is "gratify intellectual curiosity". Note how that excludes both other forms of curiosity and other forms of gratification.
There's no political or ideological dimension to this (e.g. pro-VC or anti-VC). For present purposes, none of that matters—what matters is the form of the comment: is it reflexive or reflective? Or, to use your term: is the blood rising? That's what seems to determine discussion quality. If there's a better principle than the Principle of Charity for encoding this distinction in an actionable form, I'd love to know. I haven't seen anything else that comes close.
My own style of moderation, based on long observation, is very few, very simple rules backed by ruthless and unapologetic moderation. I appreciate your leniency.
I think the answer here is to answer, here, if you disagree. It's humiliating to be corrected in public, I always hate being on the receiving end of it, but if I'm stuck with an impulsive streak then that's just part of thinking out loud on the internet.
I don't think the consequences you're worried about are likely. People expressed similar worries when we introduced "avoid gratuitous negativity", which didn't happen; there's marginally less gratuitous negativity (at least I think so) and that's about it.
That said, I always struggle to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. At work I have a mantra about code I don't like: "I might have done it differently". The coder on the other side of it was doing his or her best. I've seen things that on their face where just flatly crazy and only later learned the reasoning. A lot of them remain crazy, but crazy with a reason for the craziness. The usual missing ingredient is communication, which is why another useful thing to remind myself is "let's go ask".
In general, though, it is a long and widely accepted tradition that the powerful don't need us to be nice to them -- that mockery is one of the few inalienable counterbalances the plebs have against those living on top of the hills.