The issue with Powell was never that fraud didn't occur. Fraud is real. The issue was that Powell's claims are so extraordinary that they would threaten to discredit the case for real fraud if they turned out to be untrue and this ended up a grift 1/
Fraud happened. There is evidence of fraud happening across the country that should be the focus. But by making Powell the center of it all, the case for fraud began to hang on her claims primarily. Then "belief" in Powell became a kind of purity test for everyone 2/
So this is not to say there is some truth to Powell's basic claims, or that fraud did not happen, but that the alarm was always about the case for fraud being entirely associated with one woman's hitherto unproven claims 3/
How do people not see the danger of building the case for fraud on one woman's claims? What happens if she ends up exaggerating? If it blows up in her face, it blows up in everyone's face and then the case that fraud occurred becomes a laughing stock 4/
Moreover, Powell built this thing up so big that she could in theory not come through with the goods and say, "well, it was too big for me, who can blame me for failing?" Put simply: criticism of Powell was never to say that fraud didn't occur, it was about self-discipline 5/
The only reason we are talking about this is because "belief" in Powell has become a kind of article of faith that has been forced on people. Otherwise, there would be no debate over this, so there's that 6/
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