What you need to understand is that this is the dirty deal Reddit cuts with moderators. They collectively do millions of hours of unpaid labor for Reddit, that without which... Well Reddit would be very very different. Point is, Reddit relies on these people working for free, and the mods' real compensation is the opportunity to play petty tyrant. Reddit knows this, and doesn't care. They don't care if the user experience is compromised because of cancer-modding. They're making millions off of not having to pay these dupes. Facebook pays thousands of moderating staff, Reddit does it for free and gets them to enforce their admin-level rules too! This is why I limit my shits to give for this site. It's corrupt and nearly everybody knows it. Pity the poor cancermod, their petty power lust is the very thing Reddit exploits.

No, you're willfully misinterpreting them. They said that if they applied the rules according to the standard you wanted, they'd have to ban everyone including JBP, which shows how silly the standard you were suggesting was. Whenever I get into a scrap with mods, I always ask myself: "is this some kind of personal vendetta, or am I just minding my own business and they're causing problems?"

I hate power tripping mods more than most people but I have no sympathy for OP. Maybe you can say they just should have muted you, but there's only so much you can get up in mods' faces before they stop caring about being professional or polite. It's just human nature. Bitch at mods when they're engaging in double standards or being heavy-handed or modding ideologically. This struck me as a legitimate difference of opinion that OP just wouldn't let go.