I don’t think it is! I think the language overshot what they meant to say, and I don’t think it was egregious. My whole point was to add historical context, partly because that was lacking but mostly because the mistake was totally understandable without it. I don’t think the article meant to cast aspersions on anyone, or if it did it meant it in a very lighthearted manner with not much commitment to those aspersions. Correcting that with also a light heart is okay too.
Then perhaps the part of your original post I responded to is not in fact about the thing I thought it was.
I’m definitely with you that we should not be quick to assume malice or bad faith in general.
The casual normalization of using heavy words like ‘lie’ - which assume malice on the part of others - is exactly the thing I’m worried by though. It’s almost worse if it was unintentional.
It encourages (popularizes?) a adversarial mode of thought that I don’t think should be the default.
People casually use terms like “lie” fairly freely, at least they used to do, to mean saying something said is untrue… without intentionally casting aspersions on the subject. If we can tell that someone is using this colloquial form, and doesn’t otherwise seem to be aggressively adversarial about that usage, shouldn’t we apply the best-intent-assumption to our own interpretations? Maybe it’ll even help to make the more intentionally adversarial usage more obvious.
