Thanks for the upvote and the responses you guys. That's a relief!
Just in case anyone else rolls through here today with the same issue I was having:
We're not banned! As counter intuitive, unwelcoming, and confusing as it might be to be censored immediately after joining a community like reddit that thrives on discussion and participation, that's apparently what they do to new accounts.
Here's what I was experiencing for those of you who might be here for the same reasons I am so you won't have to create a half dozen accounts wondering why they won't post:
I for the life of me could not figure out why my comments and posts kept disappearing. I gave up on reddit entirely for a few months thinking that it was an IP issue but now that I'm on vacation I tried to get it resolved. What I was experiencing looks a lot like a shadow ban - Basically you post or comment or your post and never receive any responses or feed back or even up votes or downvotes. The comments show up when logged in but as soon as I logged out - it immediately disappears.
Follow the advice of the other folks commenting in this thread.
That's what I'm about to do.