I’m on a long-planned vacation. My brain is (mostly) offline and slowly healing from daily internet poisoning. Away from all the noise, my mind keeps returning to one thought: on many controversies, different sides present their arguments as the only truths, but quite often multiple things are true at the same time. The Graham Platner situation in Maine’s Senate race perfectly illustrates this.

In that national spectacle, all of these things seem true:

• Platner’s campaign for US Senate represents a unique threat to elite power, and therefore the elite and its media machine are subjecting him to the kind of scrutiny they do not subject themselves or their political puppets to, in an effort to get him to drop out or lose.

• Some of the accusations being hurled at Platner are uncorroborated and come from politically motivated sources, and others with similar political motivations are trying to amplify the accusations not because they are genuinely morally outraged but because they have political and ideological goals.

• The same political and media class that ignored or buried the Jeffrey Epstein scandal is now pretending to be genuinely mad about the substance of the Platner allegations/revelations — and their pretend outrage is patently ridiculous and inauthentic.

• Some of the corroborated revelations and uncorroborated allegations about Platner are serious and should be taken seriously — and should be weighed against his explanations, contrition, and denials.

• Voters being exposed to new revelations/accusations can have legitimate concerns about them and about Platner, and having those concerns does not make those voters corrupt or dupes.

• Elections are leaps of faith. We don’t know what people will do once in office. We do know that those who control the political system do not like letting anyone near power who didn’t come up through the traditional political ladder.

• Platner volunteered to risk his life for his country in combat — multiple times. He then volunteered to run for Senate when no other major challenger was willing or able to step up and give Maine voters a serious choice in a competitive primary. These decisions reflect a form of character and courage.

• Who is given grace and who is ostracized from politics remains selective. America extended grace to John McCain and allowed him into politics despite his — ahem — colorful life as a young aviator and his romantic relationships after coming home from combat. The Senate that threw out Al Franken also extended grace to Brett Kavanaugh and confirmed him despite allegations of sexual assault. Voters extended grace to Donald Trump for all of his horrors and elected him president. The fiery debate over whether voters should extend grace to Platner — a combat veteran — or ostracize him proves that we still lack a collective set of mores about forgiveness.

• The whole debate over whether Platner is sufficiently “working class” — and the portrayal of the candidate as a privileged, lazy loafing rich kid because his mom owns a local restaurant and his dad is a lawyer — has somehow ignored that Platner enlisted in the military for multiple combat tours for his country. That kind of job seems pretty . . . . uh . . . . not privileged and fairly “working” class.

All of these things are true, and there’s one more thing that’s true: saying these things does not make one a Platner shill, a misogynist, etc.

People hurling those insults and insinuations aren’t operating in good faith. They are trying to halt any conversation and shut down the democratic discourse — likely because they are politically motivated.