“As it happens”. Pure luck on my part, obviously.
You clearly think my 'yeah' was to the 'was too slow to recognize', but the 'yeah' was to the 'introspection' part, as the rest of that sentence should make very clear.
You don't know when I want from skeptical to believing it didn't happen as described. I don't know when you did because, shockingly, you didn't make that claim here in the thread until you the post I replied to. In fact you specifically claimed to Travis that you didn't automatically disbelieve this.
You haven't defined when the proper time to move between 'believe', 'skeptical', and 'disbelieve'.
Perhaps. Or perhaps I and others understood something about the world that you didn’t. You claim you’ve been introspective about this, but it seems you are only capable of that up to a point. It’s not even a possibility worth entertaining that I might have understood the situation better than you, you have to rationalize that away.
You didn't unless your understanding has expanded since the thread on the bombs sent to George Soros and others. I'm skeptical of that, and you will provide no evidence of it.
When, exactly, did you decide the evidence was strong enough to disbelieve this? When, exactly, did I?
Just a reminder: a few days ago the police had arrested the brothers and the 'I'm Totally One Of The Good Ones' crowd immediately started running their judgemental victory lap. We don't actually have anything solid yet, and are relying on unofficial leaks regarding this assumed guilt of Smollett. Still might have more fun on tap.
Poster tyr_13 made an interesting comment about letting ideology distort your thinking, and coming to the right conclusion while using flawed logic. A couple posters aside, that is not what has been happening here. The story stunk to high heaven from it's initial presentation. I think posters here have been mostly sniffing around to find the feces, more than pushing agendas.
But I suppose there is no point in discussing that. Actually, it's kind of interesting how the ITOOTGOs will insult no matter the outcome. They certainly did so here, when they thought their narrative had prevailed. They've gotten inexplicably quiet in the last couple days, of course, while The Doubters have sustained discussion all along. I think that means something.
Posters are claiming that they were called vile racists
only because they disbelieved this attack. 'A couple posters aside', that also is not happening here.
More on the initial 'evidence' below.
This was specifically why I doubted it originally. It's hard to follow but I see that some of these elements have been embellished or implied by various reporting (rather than being said by Smollett directly) so I can't rely on that reasoning quite AS much.
Red flags are important, but they are not in and of themselves generally
evidence. Red flags based on elements reported by TMZ? Definitely not evidence.
And as I keep pointing out, things even more crazy than what was alleged here actually did happen.
More generally, the 'unified' reasoning that some tended to here isn't all that useful either. Even without incomplete or dubious information, requiring one explanation for every element, or that all the elements tie together, can blind people to compound causes. I see this all the time in lab. 'But that doesn't explain x AND y', well, they aren't always caused by the same things. Red herrings aren't just made by humans; they naturally occur too.
Another confounding element is the loose use of the word 'knew'. When someone says, 'I knew it!' they don't always mean they 'knew', but that they 'strong suspected it could be true'.
