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1) I've been thinking a bit about consensual reality and the evidence of our senses. Particularly, I'm thinking about the world as experienced by those of us who participate actively and frequently in the Twitterverse, and in social and Internet media in general.
2) Even more particularly, I'm thinking of how these sources of information, plus publicly-viewable journalistic sources, and how they inform our various perspectives on @realDonaldTrump - in particular what he did/said with/to @Russia, and what they did/aided with/to/for him.
3) Public record - items of information everybody saw, or could have seen, such as Tweets, news reports verified by multiple outlets - becomes a part of consensual reality and the evidence of our senses.
4) For me, multi-sourced news reports of closed-door meetings, even (especially) unexpected ones such as with photos from @tassagency_en taken in the Oval Office the day after @Comey was fired, are important.
5) Statements made on Twitter are important and also public. Statements made at rallies are also. Statements and responses made during election-year debates are especially so.
6) These become, through the evidence of our senses, part of our consensual reality. And still, many see them in polarizingly different ways. Couple this with the fact that legal systems are, not only not morally consistent, but logically inconsistent ...
7) ... a fact established in the philosophical (academic) world at least ... and we see how we all can look at something, see it as a different problem (or maybe even not a problem at all), & think, not only of different solutions, but perhaps even that it does not need solving.
8) This is even before we touch what we don't know - anything actually said in a secret meeting; anything withheld from us due to the needs of national security or because of political motive. And I am wholly unfamiliar with legally precise definitions of conspiracy or treason.
9) So when I say that something is treasonous, or that there were conspiratorial acts, I am saying nothing about the precise burden of proof behind a charge of a Constitutional crime. I am characterizing events evident to my senses and to consensual reality.
10) Yes, such statements are opinions, and they are my opinions. But the evidence of my senses is still that: still evidence in a real sense, especially when paired with it also being part of the public record, which is part of consensual reality .
11) I cannot speak with such certainty about the rational character of my thoughts or conclusions about these matters, this consensually-agreed data. This is the area where we're all looking at the same world, the same data and coming up with vastly different conclusions.
12) But when someone's argument to me seems to indicate they don't even live in the same consensual reality, haven't even received the same sensory information ... that's where I furrow my brow. At such times I might simply disengage. No further discourse will be profitable.
13) And I won't be so bold as to say such arguments constitute gaslighting of me by the ones arguing. No, that's going too far; we're still both trying to arrive at the truth. But sometimes it does feel that way. It's baffling and disorienting, at the very least.
14) I've said repeatedly elsewhere that I grew up Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian in NW Georgia, am a white heterosexual cisgender male, and have had to work to overcome the effects of privilege AND religious manipulation, the same that affect many of my culture and region.
15) So I've been fooled before, and, despite reassurances by The Who that "Won't Get Fooled Again" is an empty statement of bravado, I'm trying really hard not to get fooled again. And I weigh the evidence of my senses and consensual reality in this. I really do.
@threadreaderapp unroll
In particular: My knowledge is lacking with regard to Burden of Proof in either case.
