If you frame it this way then sure, it's cowardly to do that and it becomes a matter of principle not to. But you know the phrase 'all models are wrong, some are useful'? On HN, this is not a useful model.

There are some systems in which no-holds-barred aggression actually works, i.e. leads to interesting outcomes. Examples include rugby teams that beat the crap out of each other on the pitch and then go out drinking together, literary circles where the game is to be as poisonously witty as possible, or the mathematical world, where the only thing that matters is whether you can prove what you say (though people tend to exaggerate that aspect and ignore the social one). These systems have in common that they're small, well-defined, and strongly cohesive. Such communities can withstand violence because other forces hold them together.

HN is not like that. The community is large, ill-defined and weakly cohesive, and there are no forces other than civility holding it together. What happens here if people start throwing their elbows around (as you did in your comment above) is that we get massive flareups, all the interesting animals leave the forest, only the people with grievances and flamethrowers remain and then ('hey, where did everybody go?') even they leave. Then we have scorched earth, or heat death—not an interesting outcome. For this not to happen, HN needs protecting. HN users need to understand that participating here means optimizing for curiosity, which requires a sustainably interesting community.

You complain that people aren't judging your content, but actually everything you post is content—there's nothing else there. You don't get to decide how that content gets classified. If you put turds in the punch bowl and expect people to consider your punch on its merits, that's another unhelpful model.