Is it so hard to just avoid GD and Pol if you don't want to read that stuff?
Many Codexers do exactly that and the game-related forums are pretty tame in comparison.
Not at all. The problems only happen when shitposting from there spills over to the game-related forums (and yes, it does), and the fact that it (plus Site Feedback) give the Codex the unsavoury reputation it has. And yes, it has indeed cleaned up a great deal over the past several years. I suspect the recent increase in the number of games worth discussing has a lot to do with it.
A lot of the discussion in the game forums
is good, even when it is, to use the diplomatic corps euphemism, frank and direct. But still, a line needs to be drawn, even if the line isn't always clear and there are judgment calls to make.
To put it in really simple terms derived from personal butthurt: tearing apart my Pillars review and calling me a shilling fag crybaby is perfectly fine. Leaking my work-in-progress review pre-emptively even to other sites and then proceeding to tear into it, and me, is not. Nor would threats of violence to me or mine be.*
(Want an example of a gray area? "All niggers must die" in a signature. Porn or shock pics in signatures are already forbidden, and from where I'm at, calling for racial genocide is way worse than a picture of a naked ass. Why allow one but not the other?)
*And yes, I do remember that the administration intervened in that. Eventually.