I am going to reluctantly, and with much equivocating, going to give Sam the benefit of the doubt.
What I think is happening, is that @Sam_Stone, like many of my (former) Conservative friends, has fallen down the rabbit hole of bad reporting, commentary disguised as ‘News’, and (self-imposed) information restriction, that they believe that they are martyrs, and mentally cannot afford to follow up on the facts lest they pretty much have to entirely re-examine their life and apologize to huge chunks of the world, not just the internet.
One of my friends, let’s call them Pete, was a pretty run of the mill conservative, who was uncomfortable with the whole LGBQT+ issue, pro-gun, comfortable with Christian morals ‘informing’ US law, and wanting the gov’t to ‘stay out of his business’. But he would actually look at facts - and if a Conservative politician was found to be cheating / breaking the law / etc, he would condemn them.
During the lead up to 2016 though, he kept taking what Fox (and others) was telling him without questioning. Still, he didn’t care for Trump’s lack of history when it came to supporting conservative values, and preferred Cruz ( 
). But once Trump had the nomination, it was all about “well, he’s got the nomination and he’s better than Hillary” and so it went.
But by the time of Floyd/BLM, he was a True Believer. It was all about the narrative he was being fed every day by the news. And I’d try, oh how I’d try to point him to something like NPR or the BBC (because of course, CNN was the devil) to try to point out something like facts. And instead he’d pull the Sam lines of ‘people are saying’ or ‘there’s an investigation into…’ or ‘but the Democrats are already doing XYZ’.
And this is where Sam falls apart. Because, yes there is a rough equivalency from a POV that only Obi Wan Kenobi’s statements about Luke’s father can equal. IF (and it’s a huge give) you equate all the things various Democrats are ACCUSED of, to what Trump and his ilk are CONFIRMED of doing, then, yeah, both sides look equally bad (speaking to Sam’s Trump / Biden ‘just as bad’ comment).
But here’s the thing. 95+% (note I do not say 100%, there are bad apples in Democrats as well, and poor decisions can be made by anyone, such as Biden’s IMHO mishandling of the Afghanistan exit) of these accusations are false, misleading or flat out libel and have been proven so beyond a reasonable doubt. But if all you hear about from your ‘news’ is the accusations then it seems that the equivalency is valid.
The fact that Sam, like my friend Pete (although we’re not on talking terms anymore) absolutely refuses to look to the confirmation of the past, but only to the possible convictions of the future (it’s always the next bombshell, or next figure that’ll be the proof), allows them to continue to be ‘right’ and not have to go through the various mea culpas and self-examination they are otherwise due for.
And here’s the thing, and while I’m bothering to write this book for Sam yet have largely given up on Pete - I think at some level Sam knows he’s wrong. He is damn-well trying his hardest to ignore it, and he’s deflecting more like the main dish in Star Trek, but his near-constant efforts to move to ‘you’re being mean’ or his stance on admitting Trump is wrong but possibly still justified seems to indicate he’s not completely blind to his own contra-factual issues.
So here’s my last statement for Sam specifically - You don’t need to grovel, and you shouldn’t be asked to. What you should do is stop letting yourself be played by bad news sources. You can and should feel free to criticize politicians doing dumb shit, but don’t use that as an excuse to not evaluate how badly other individuals did/are doing. If you make an unsubstantiated claim, or one based on limited info, own it and move on while trying to do better the next time. I mean look at the ‘Disheveled Trump’ or the ‘Boebert paid companionship’ threads - plenty of people projected their hopes for schadenfreude in those waaaaay ahead of facts and confirmation, and almost all of them had no problems admitting it when they were wrong.
We will respect you more, rather than less for being able to take these steps, and it’ll go a long way to finding your arguments on these subjects as worthy of anything other than name calling.
