A lot of people confuse cynicism with wisdom, and that sets people up to be susceptible to bigger problems. For example, if you believe the legal system is corrupt and dysfunctional, it’s very easy to passively tune out and not support reform efforts because you think they’re pointless.

We see this a lot in politics where accusations of corruption are used to conflate people who are orders of magnitude apart – a good example of that are the recent classified documents investigations where some faux-sophisticates tried the “both sides do it!” excuse without recognizing the difference between immediate compliance and protracted resistance on contrived grounds.

The point is not that people were wrong but they were wrong because they had knee-jerk, lazy takes that should be disparaged.

I also know that the some of the people making these kind of takes have already pivoted to another knee-jerk, lazy take along the lines of "well, he ripped off rich people".

I'd actually appreciate it if anybody who made the original statements about Democrats not prosecuting SBF would come on and admit they were wrong.

There's nothing wrong with being wrong, but its important to remember the times that we were and remind ourselves that we are not infallible :)

I'd say it depends on how confident/aggressive someone was. Perhaps OP didn't word it the best way, but it's also good to pause and reflect?

the point is that the older comments were confidently accusing the democrats of being corrupt, in a way that they weren't. its political

It is absolutely worth remembering that much of the commentary on this site is written by some of the most gullible people on the planet. Aside from SBF-Biden conspiracy fans you also have your anti-vax guys, your climate denial guys, suckers for the latest superconductor scam, people who are still falling for a giant astroturf campaign by the fission industry, blockchain believers, and much much more.

There is no "old money" in the US. The country is young enough for all of it to be "new money".