Since all other things are subjective and everyone will argue every which way depending on perception, I leave that to individual perception.
I will say that absolutely, the limits of head movement/vision in the cockpit have changed. That is not perceptual but complete fact and verifiable if you checked the limits before. If you use set views, you aren't going to see it. Perhaps that is not in the limit of "flight model" and doesn't need to be announced. But it does absolutely change the overall capabilities of the combination of pilot/aircraft.
Kill counts don't mean anything. You can get 8+ kills in any plane with the right combination of events and a half decent skill set. Unless you average that over a large number of missions, you aren't going to get meaningful data. A single statistical anomaly doesn't prove anything.
If you look, you can see an effort to limit the Pony's effect on the game in progressive steps. It's ENY has been progressively dropped down until it sits at 5, the same as the 262 and the F4U-4, both of which are perk planes. This is a fact, not subjective. The main reason it isn't perked now, is it would be totally obvious, even to the most blind, if you perked the standard USAAF fighter of the last two years of the war. It's ENY is a tacit admission that the Pony affects the overall arena, like it or not.
The applause by pundits is the evidence of the "politics", admit it or not. Politics exists when you have more than 3 people involved. To say that no one, whoever they are, are not affected by politics is naive. If they go with the group, they are bending to the will of the group. If they go against the group, they are fighting with the politics. Fighting against or going with are both reactions to the political situation, in either case, they are affected by it.
