1. A player does not have to accept an invitation to play in the Ryder Cup so if they have a problem with any aspect of it, including if they are paid or if there will be filming by some company, they don't have to accept and they can stay home and let another player participate who accepts those issues.
2. In selecting the captain's choices the only thing to consider is how a player is currently performing. Justin Thomas was not playing well (His duck hook into the trees at the Wyndham when he needed a birdie is not performing under pressure) and neither was Colin Morikawa who had two of the worst rounds of any player on the weekend in his last event.
In the end The Ryder Cup is a sense of pride for some of the players and who would have more exemplified this than Keegan Bradley and Lucas Glover - it was an opportunity to show some class and compassion which would have shown the rest of the players how much this meant to these two guys and made the team far more of a unit set on winning instead of a buddy trip.
Agree with your first point to some degree, certainly the week of the event is NOT the time to express an opinion on that subject.
As far as picking how a player is performing, I'm not sure how exactly you can find who is "in form" when they haven't played in 5 weeks.
Besides, when picking a player "in form" he's often just about to revert to the mean.
That said, I most certainly would have taken Lucas Glover because it we're going to change the rules to allow ourselves to pick players based on late season performance, it's hard to see how we could leave off a guy who won two of the last four events.
I also would have taken Justin Thomas because he has a proven record in the format.
It's a crap shoot to decide who's going to be "in form" after a 5 week layoff halfway around the world, but I'd prefer a guy who knows how to compete and contend even when he may or may not be "in form" and that includes Justin Thomas(great team match play record) AND Jordan Spieth who was really struggling. Spieth doesn't need to be "in form" to demoralize an opponent or even beat him, so I'd always take him.
The jet lag excuse baffles me.
I mean they went over 2 weeks ago, then came back.
Why not just go over a week later, and stay and acclimate, prepare(maybe have players and especially caddies study the greens), enjoy Italy and Rome a bit, rest and not waste precious time and energy crossing the Atlantic and 6 time zones
three times before the matches.
It seems ONE 10-14 day trip just would do more good and waste less energy than two separate trips