Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

The point, AFAICT, is that we're (increasingly?) unable to have a good faith conversation about norms re: tactics because people actually care more about immediate outcomes than stability/process. "Would you be so forgiving if he wasn't wearing your colors?" is a reasonable Q

Yes, I think we all converge on that as a reasonable question. It's the 'both sides' comparison to Thiel that breaks the conversation.

What "both sides" comparison are you referring to? What I'm seeing is the suggestion that PT would've been raked over the coals for doing what RH did, which is almost certainly true and not really any kind of equivocation

PT is critiqued for a category of things he either doesn't refute or explicitly participates in. Therefore, analogizing RH's functional error to PT's body of work pretty clearly confuses the conversation. "PT would not get the same treatment" isn't interesting because PT != RH.

The question is actually much simpler than you're making it out to be here.

How so? Simply stating that doesn't make it true. PT, again, is critiqued for held/expressed beliefs. What happened with Reid is something he's apologized for. Regardless of your belief as to whether RH deserves further on this issue, these are pretty clearly distinct things.

Let's go back to Mike's tweet, I don't think he was asking "why is RH not generally more critiqued, like PT?" Because the answer is clearly substantive -- more people find PT objectionable. I think Mike was asking the better question: "Disinfo is bad -- are we watching for this?"

I don't think we've got quite the same lens on this (or that you've got a good sense of what mine is), but I think I agree with the bottom line, here. "How would I feel if it were the other side?" isn't meant to equivocate; it's a thought experiment to dispel some degree of bias.