It looks like your concerns are more about general “Current Moderation” so here might be better.
I have other words for what you call “politically correct” but anyway, it looks like Our Standards defined in our Code of conduct.
Please don’t be politically correct. 
Questioning, criticizing or doubting, especially of moderation actions, is good and welcomed, and can be addressed frankly.
The posts in the unlisted topic could be interpreted in several ways. Before splitting them, I choose the worst one because of the flags. Then, I had to decide if this should go further and decided to just make a quick post, considering the best interpretation. As I said, is it really that important?
Flags are reviewed by volunteers. So when reviewing a flag, I consider at least:
- my available time
- my available energy
- the number of other flags about the same post/topic/user
- the severity of the issue
- the time necessary to handle the situation (the issue is obvious? How many posts are in the topic? etc.)
- the appropriate actions I can or could do
- other things I could do instead of handling the flag (i.e.: write something in the documentation)
If the conditions are not met, I can leave that for another mod or moment, or ask for another piece of advice. So a quite serious issue could be waiting for another piece of advice or be delayed at a moment while another trivial issue could be handled quickly another time.
I recall the flags you are talking about but I can’t recall the exact timeline. Given how the topic got back on its rails, I think I just approved the flags without figuring the proper way to handle that. I could have split the topic, but then, you know, it would have required a significant amount of time to justify that action