I mean, go ahead and lie

I'm not lying. It's there in the textbooks. There are many available for free online these days.

Memorizing proofs

No students are required to memorise proofs, only how to do proofs to begin with.

Some chapters had token word problems

They're not token problems - learning how to do word problems is a central core of Maths. They're thrown in often.

Science class math comes with sniff tests that math class math doesn’t

Not really. v=d/t, s=ut+½at², and similar equations are used often in teaching Maths (such as in non-linear graphs).

because following rules is what you do

That's right. We teach that if you follow all the rules you will always get the correct answer. Now witness adults on social media arguing about the answer to an order of operations question because they've forgotten the rules but refuse to admit that's even possible, and yet the rules are still there to be found in Maths textbooks now, same as they were then, still the same rules (despite some of them claiming the rules have been changed).

algebraic notation is artificial.

No it isn't.

It’s manmade,

The notation is, the Maths isn't.

like the English language.

It's not at all like language, any language.

It’s a method of communicating ideas

No, it's a method of calculating things, like rocket trajectories, etc. Got nothing to do with communication at all.

except it was taught as a series of rules and procedures that you were supposed to memorize how to do without understanding the goal

I can't help it if you yourself had a bad teacher, but look in the textbooks and that isn't how it's taught at all.