Sorry let me follow that previous post by also pointing out what I’ll call “trust in the system”.
If someone has been convicted in court or exonerated, my position would be that you should stand by that judgement. That is on the basis that, ultimately, mass media is not a proper court. The “court of public opinion” is a pejorative term for a reason. It’s not a system that can be trusted in its conclusions.
An actual court is good because a set of impartial jurors are given full and complete access to the underlying information and presented with both sides by talented professionals.
You’re not going to get any better than that. And while it may be that the person was ruled innocent on the basis of a lack of compelling evidence, rather than cleared by some evidence, we still need to accept and trust that this conclusion is as good as it gets. It could have come to the wrong answer, but the base assumption should be, as said, that you’re probably not going to somehow do better than that in coming to a conclusion.
You and I will never likely never meet, let alone talk with Ilhan Omar in any substantive way.
The people who work along side her and who are in fact her allies both have access to her and her way of thinking in private and they have strong motive to defend her and view her statements in the most positive and forgiving light.
In essence, we are talking about a jury where the jury is people that the defendant got to choose for himself.
If, in that scenario, you are publicly put to shame - that is about as trustworthy as it gets. The evidentiary side may be lower than a criminal court but, as said, the jury is your friends and allies.
The only other person who also been recently shamed in the same manner, it should be pointed out, is Steve King.
I’m quite willing to call King racist. I trust the system. Maybe the system got it wrong. Maybe they overreacted. But we’re not going to be able to come to a better conclusion than they did. If the system decided that King is racist, it makes the most sense to trust it if the conclusion matters. If I’m concerned about racism influencing Congress in a negative way, I would vote for someone who was not Steve King.