Like frugalone and (I think) Gardnr, I've trained my eye to not see Friend or Group suggestions or the ads on the sidebar, and I'm getting better at skipping the promoted posts in my news feed. So far I still find more value in having Facebook than not, but I don't have to be their -- umm -- tool. If it's not possible to eliminate the cruft, at least I can ignore it.
As for the posts you hide reappearing, what I discovered during the last election was that Fb did hide posts from, say, Breitbart, but that if someone on my Friends list posted or commented on a Breitbart post, I still saw content from them. Despite complaints to Facebook that I didn't want to see any of that crap (it applied to both sides, btw), there appears to be no way to shut off that firehose.