I'm curious about what you mean re. Hubski not being a place for honest discussion. Do you mean intellectually honest? Emotionally honest? Please develop.

Don't know if I could easily dissuade you of the notion that cliques are prevalent here, or that they inform the general shape of discussions. I think that your views on the matter might be colored by a little bit of confirmation bias, and you may or may not choose to stick around long enough to recognize the long list of rules that disprove the exception.

I can tell you that, as somebody who's hung around the site for, I dunno, two years now? I see little evidence of true cliquishness. Oh, people have followers, and some more than others. That's written into the structure of the site. And if you choose to dwell on such things, you might start to wonder why user X has more followers than user Y. But I can also say with confidence that, should you choose, you could just as comfortably interact with each party and their followers without being or even feeling discriminated against. A good first step might be to try out Zen Mode, which erases all metrics-based functions from your experience, allowing you to interact without having to worry about all that silly point-based nonsense.

I would encourage you to stick around a while longer, and to not be afraid to brush up against the opinions or beliefs of others, as long as you do it in a way you'd be comfortable doing in real life. After all, there are some really neat people and ideas kicking around here, you just have to invest a little.