I think you're conflating a bunch of stuff. I love reading Mensch because I love the catharsis of her Chaos Emeralds reporting style, but I would never source it because she cray. However, I'd also caveat that with her getting some pretty obscure stuff right on the nose - not guessable stuff, but like, server ping stuff and a few of the maybe-predictable but still unlikely connection threads.
But there are really three different types of gafers right now -
1. folks like you and I, just reacting to news and making their own predictions based on the facts.
2. People who're pessimistic and just don't want to get "invested" in a success that may never come - and thinking about worst case scenarios.
3. And people who's hobby or job it is to continually cloud these discussions with concern trolling and sometimes much clumsier and more obvious distractions.
There's a fourth type, just real Trump supporters who genuinely believe there's no fire under the smoke, or know it's true and are "colluding" with the messaging, but they are few and far between and mostly get ignored.
Obviously number 3 muddies the waters for sane discussion but there's not much the mods can do unless they break to TOU or admit they're deliberately trolling/obfuscating/astroturfing.
So no matter what, the "real news" and the "showed up on CNN" position is a reasonable place to discuss from and the most stable foundation. What's infuriating is the occasional idiot who looks at the Comey firing or Flynn's cavalcade of shenanigans and states that there's nothing going on there. Those people are an affront to even stupidity and should be on your ignore list already.
