I wish I had something smart to say on this.

It's a pity to see the conflicts between "powerful" individuals in this community spreading. Situations like this one are delicate. I have not looked into the causes and neither am I affiliated with either party involved.

I cannot pick sides here, to me it looks like both individuals are escalating the conflict continuously, so I have to blame them equally for not finding a more constructive approach to dealing with the situation.

The above paragraph is a statement I have to subscribe to for most reciprocal flagging disputes.

Unfortunately the voting rules on this platform do allow this kind of behavior. This is not to say that the rules are at fault either, I do not know of a practical change to the given rules that would be limiting this kind of behavior and I would argue that no set of rules would be ever be devoid of possibilities to be misappropriated.

In the end, what we are dealing with here - it's people!