For the meriters, I can understand the argument for red-trust, but I tend to think that it's at the wrong level. If the meriter was meriting it because they were actively thinking, "I want to make the forum really vicious, where everyone is constantly tearing each other apart for stupid things, and this post moves in that direction," even that's not really a trust-relevant motive, just a very unhelpful motive. And probably the meriters were thinking more innocent things than that.
Neg.-rating someone just because they sent out 1 merit is completely backwards and proper trust abuse in my view. It's similar to political de-platforming.
As I had said, I would have much preferred having some sort of forum tools to address this in a completely different way. My red tags have never been permanent but I felt like this was the closest tool available to get my point across/initiate change. All the right eyes are on this topic right now.. instead of trying to hang me, lets figure out how to fix this. You think I wanted to red tag some of the best members on various boards? I've slept on making this decision for a few days now.
-- probably last post of mine on this topic, like fuck I'm going to go in circles all night with Lauda