I feel like I have a duty before a community that I see massive potential in. To stand up for my values and denounce all the shit I hate here in an articulate, reasoned manner.

Then collect the worst examples and make an article of them. Preferably the ones that were upvoted (because if they were downvoted it means the community already disagrees with them). If the situation is so horrible, you should have an easy job. Just create a text file on your desktop, and anytimes something pisses you off, put the permalink there. Wait until you have enough material (please, don't make it a series of short articles), then process it.

It'd be a big amount of work to even call out the most egregious shitty shit here on a regular basis, with some citations and explanations for why I did so.

If the things are really so horrible, is the explanation even necessary? Just give a dozen citations, which prove it wasn't a one-time event, and that's it. Preferably they should be citations of different people.

If you want to make a drama, please put some work into it. Or use your rationality and outsource the job -- take 10 of your most ideologically close friends and ask them to spend one afternoon trying to find the most horrible upvoted comments, so that you can write a critical article.