> All of my comments have been made to break through the HN echo chamber

You could justify anything that way. That is the sort of thing garden-variety trolls come up with.

> then the entire notion of the restrictions being due to supposed violations of the guidelines is a moot point

That doesn't follow from your premise at all.

Edit: btw, I thought I'd deleted this - I think it failed to go through because of a network failure. I tell people not to do these tit-for-tat things and try to avoid them myself for the most part (which often means succumbing to temptation and then editing or deleting after the fact). Since you've replied, though, I'll leave it up now.