Other people's violations of the site guidelines don't justify your breaking them as well. That's not only a non sequitur, it's a fatal one. If you see someplace we didn't intervene where we should have, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or by emailing hn@ycombinator.com in egregious cases.

We're not trying to be neutral in the sense you describe. I agree that it's impossible, that everything is ultimately political or at least connected to politics by one or two hops, and so on. But this is a hard problem with no easy answers—actually with no answers. I certainly don't have one. The answer you're offering is not an answer, because picking a side and banning the other side would explode this community. It isn't just people on the banned side who would oppose such an approach; most HN users on all sides would. The rift would kill the community. What good would that do?

Another reason is that political issues are more important than most of what appears on HN. Justice is more important than Rust. Does it follow that no website dedicated to less important things has a right to exist? I don't think so. I think it's ok to have a forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity, even though justice is more important than Rust. It's fine if you disagree, but then it would be good to make clear that that is what you disagree with. So far I don't think I've ever heard anyone come out and say so. But if you do agree that it's ok to have a forum dedicated to intellectual curiosity, I think I can argue confidently that the approach we take as moderators follows from that.