I'm familiar with a lot of other open source projects and people, and I can guess what you mean about the occasional unintentional or intentional bad actor. FWIW, IMHO, there are no bad actors (as I see it) in Racket.
What I think just happened is a little growing pains, when a few new things happened all at once, and everyone (including in core) was caught off-guard by at least one surprise. I think it all arguably reduces to areas of communication to improve.
I absolutely agree about the strong vision, and I think that such a vision probably mostly exists, in core, but that it's not yet been made really-super-clear to everyone else, nor has there then been a chance for everyone else to comment on and influence an unambiguous draft vision. Until everyone comes to shared understanding and agreement on the top-level requirements, I think an RFC process on features and tactics seems not only premature, but also perpetuates misconceptions/misalignments.
There needs to be a strong limited vision for any project and a conservative approach to not try to fix what's not broken.
Getting rid of s expressions without it being part of a more cohesive improvement (like better supporting a new type system or something) just for mainstream appeal seems like an odd choice to me.