So, I am not disputing the principle that good faith is required; on the contrary, I am lamenting its demise and the weaponization of good faith against its practitioners.

So, the issue is that while hoping it is sufficient to act in good faith, others are able to profit wildly from their own bad faith. In effect, your good faith empowers them. And, while the current situation unfolded over years, we cannot ignore the recent rapid acceleration and its meaning.

We have come to a place where bad faith is normalized and even celebrated. Not sure what the way back is.

Suspending judgement is an interesting and valuable intellectual exercise, and trying to see other perspectives makes us better people. We have to accept however, that a time comes when just like any other approach, such measures not only fail, but full catastrophically. Just like an ardent pacifist, or an equally ardent militant, lack of adaptability is doom. Sometimes you have to sit down and talk, and sometimes you have to fight to the death.

The trick, and no one has yet figured out a formula for this, is to know when to adapt and how much. Anyone who tries to tell you that the only way to deal with a Nazi is a bullet, or conversely, love, is wrong. It’s advice that sounds good, but it’s totally useless. When to to talk, when to listen, and when to reach for a sidearm is the real question and more often than not people don’t even acknowledge that; it’s too nuanced, too open to interpretation, and too messy.

The thing is, it’s messy regardless of whether or not we choose to approach conflict (intellectual or otherwise) programmatically rather than dynamically.

The world would be a far simpler and better place.