You seem to think that the number of times someone makes a carefully prepared public statement needs to be greater than one to determine what they think on the subject.
I do not see how the logic follows there.
That it's reported in the news or published on his blog or written in a memoir or whatever is not the relevant fact here. The relevant fact is that it is something that he carefully planned to say and said, and that is sufficient information to have high confidence that it is what he meant to say and therefore what he thinks.
You seem to think that the number of times someone makes a carefully prepared public statement needs to be greater than one to determine what they think on the subject.
I do not see how the logic follows there.
Then there really isn't anything more to say. If you really think a person's attitude (which was the original issue under discussion in this sub-thread) can be thoroughly identified and analyzed and dissected based on one example of their speech, then so be it.
I happen to think human beings are far more complex than that, that context matters, that there are huge issues of subjective interpretation and nuance in play, and that it's a mistake for anybody to assume that they have some kind of deep insight into this guy, based just on this.
That it's reported in the news or published on his blog or written in a memoir or whatever is not the relevant fact here.
Nobody is claiming that. What I'm claiming is "insufficient data".
The relevant fact is that it is something that he carefully planned to say and said, and that is sufficient information to have high confidence that it is what he meant to say and therefore what he thinks.
The problem is going from "what he said" to "what you think he thinks". He said something very specific, and I see a lot of people making radical inferences and generalizations based off of that. What he said is what he said yes, but people aren't just talking about that, they're talking about their own interpretation of what he said, which is colored by their own biases and preconceptions... and, in this case, probably just a little bit of mob psychology.
I do not see how the logic follows there.
That it's reported in the news or published on his blog or written in a memoir or whatever is not the relevant fact here. The relevant fact is that it is something that he carefully planned to say and said, and that is sufficient information to have high confidence that it is what he meant to say and therefore what he thinks.