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... is the rule here that we're allowed to call large swatches of people out as inconsistent without evidence, but just not search through someone's post history to show it for specific individuals who do have that evidence?
Are you disputing that broad swathes of people on both the right and the left are inconsistent, complaining that you think it's against the rules (or should be) to say broad swathes of people on both the right and the left are inconsistent, arguing that only one side is inconsistent and demanding evidence that the other side is also inconsistent, or just asking permission to try to gotcha someone?
I'll take the last option, if it's on the table. But it's not my point. Similarly, I can and have written long top-level digressions on motivated reasoning reason and its failure modes, both on the right and the left; I can highlight other top-level posters today who're pretty clearly not caring about whether what they say is true or not. But whether it's present in general isn't my point, either, and it wasn't the claim you dived in with.
There are claims about a specific thing.
They aren't testable claims. There's no number of doubts in the first days of the Rittenhouse case, or situations like Arbery or Steven Ray Baca (or Babbit!) cases where the same posters have been either ambivalent or opposed to their supposed co-partisans, or others where people were willing to consider the alternative explanations for their supposed enemies. I can show myself literally writing "I'm reserving judgment on this whole thing til we get the bodycam". Doesn't matter, you threw an asterisk on at the last minute, done.
The 'what if the shoe were on the other foot' arguments write themselves. Would you consider it more acceptable were I to dive into a conversation saying, well, I don't think you're being blatantly dishonest, but darwin was three years ago? Because I don't particularly want to do that, but if it's permitted I at least need to consider what responses are available to it.
It wouldn't bug me as much you actually confronted the main truth that the other writer literally spelled out as their major update from the story ("From rest, the driver backed up her 1.5-ton SUV and accelerated towards the ICE agent"). ((or if your examples of things we Can't Be Sure of did not include multiple in strong contradiction with the evidence: so far the best example of motivated reasoning you've given is you)).
But as is, it seems like an epitome of "If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table". Regardless of whether it's in the rules or not, what do you think you're even arguing here?
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