I completely buy the "this is an unpaid gig we do on our free time"-thing. I do unpaid work for an organization on my free time, and sometimes it gets tiring. But, here's the thing: if you're really that tired of it, and see it just as a slog ... quit. It's unpaid. No one is forcing you to do this. It isn't the end of the world, or even of the thing. Just walk away. But they can't do that because then they wouldn't be part of the in-group anymore, and what's worse if they all quit en masse and got new mod, then those mods might do things differently. That would be unacceptable. That's why they only make people moderators one at a time and then induct them into the proper way of doing things.
This especially applies to Cessna. He should have quit being a mod permanently ten years ago, at the latest. Especially since so much of the current mod culture obviously comes from him. Look at how he behaves in threads were he's just acting as a regular poster. He is incredibly thin-skinned and will brook no disagreement. He has the truth and the correct information, anyone disagreeing is wrong and stupid and should know better than to question his knowledge. He was the dominant mod and set the general tone for a long time and this part of his personality has clearly become the core of the way the mods act there. He isn't the source of the ideology of parodical wokeness that's come to dominate the site, but he is definitely the source of the mod teams smug self-righteousness and unspoken demands to be treated as superior beings.