Of course it's not the most egregious example. But that's because it's not an example of dishonesty at all. It's an example of me losing an argument.
I don't know what your problem is. Your slander was entirely unprovoked.
My contribution is going to be unwanted and unhelpful, but I've been drinking and there's an interesting issue here.
The accusation of dishonesty seems to come from the exchange around subsidies:
Inga first claimed that SALT could be acting as a subsidy, then, when presented with evidence that the balance of payments indicated that subsidization effectively occurred in the opposite direction, tried to argue that subsidy meant something different.
That's not the interesting bit and the accuracy of the restatement doesn't matter too much.
Inga's argument was bad, but determining whether it was dishonestly made requires a bad argument AND an inference of bad faith. People make that sort of mischaracterization or unwittingly shift their positions all the time-the question is whether it was offered in bad faith.
But! The countercharge that the accusation of dishonesty is
itself dishonest or a slander relies upon the same rules and thus requires the same sort of inference. In other words, to treat the accusation as dishonest, it needs to be both unwarranted and in bad faith.
This is where it gets fun.
If such inference should not be made without more than a bad argument,
then Homer's charge was unwarranted, but should be treated as having been made in good faith.
However,
if-as needed to accuse Homer of dishonesty/slander-we can make such inferences of malice,
then Homer's original charge of dishonesty was warranted, because he could infer the malice necessary to make such an accusation.