So today I wanted to say thanks, on behalf of the HN community.
Running a forum is hard work and everyone wants to devolve every mod decision into rules lawyering, like "well, then why wasn't this specific thing in the rules?"
No, there can't be a rule for literally everything, so you're just going to have to be an adult and take it on the chin when the mods make a decision and double down on it. I completely empathize with dang's final post, that your "legalistic gambit" is a waste of everyone's time, and often the platform people like to spring off some sort of "omg the mod tyranny" campaign.
That happened over 70 days ago. Maybe it's time to let it go and learn to live with the fact that your tiny comment was flagged. Looking at your post history, you've lived through much worse, respectfully.