What are we supposed to get out of your comment, or is this supposed to just be an unvarnished sneer?

As readers we are supposed to learn that we are being misled. One hopes GP commenter would learn they cannot always get away with this sort of deception.

What, if anything, are we supposed to get out of your comment, which seems to question the value of critical reading?

If you disagree, you can reply as to why you disagree, or you can silently disagree and move on. You've added no reasoning beyond the disagreement that slavboj brought up, only that you think it's not just wrong but... misleading? Of what? Why is it motte-and-bailey? Why would it be doublethink? What are you adding to the disagreement? rt4mn clearly states what they disagree about, namely their belief that a non-votable institution with democratic oversight is a democratic institution. All you're doing is sneering, you're not actually offering a reason for disagreement.

Sneering without reason brings the quality of discussion down on this site. Either substantively disagree or move on.

You could have just admitted that you're incapable of critical reading and moved on, instead of that wall of text.

Perhaps they misspoke, or perhaps they misunderstood, or perhaps their usage of the term is different then yours or mine. I understood them to mean it in the sense that the FDA holds democratic legitimacy by nature of its assistance as an org within the US government, which is by any reasonable definition a democratic institution.

The point is that its not really relevant to the point they are making, which is that the FDA as an institution has some weird incentives.

> motte-and-bailey.

I'm not familiar with this idiom so I cant say.