The bans weren’t designed to be an excommunication but an inconvenience. I’d sign up again with another username which they knew was me, and I could stay until I acted like an idiot again and they banned me, etc.
As Noam Chomsky said, "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
The reason I give that quote is because you're not wrong. In other topics you can express all of the absolutely vile and hateful things one might like, all while acting like an absolutely horrible person. So just stop making fun of the political ideology largely espoused by the political establishment and corporate elite, and you'll have no problems. It will be quite interesting to see how history ultimately records the times of today.
[1] - https://babylonbee.com/news/the-babylon-bees-man-of-the-year...
There are a lot of forums that are good cuz they just ban annoying people (and that self selects a lot too). When you try to do mental gymnastics to justify removing people from a community suddenly a certain kind of person can show up and ruin it for everyone. (EDIT: that can be a valid choice for a community! Just has consequences)
But HN feels pretty unique in the quality despite being filled with a looooot of people who are, honestly, pretty agressive! The mod team seems to do a pretty good job.