And one of the sides has to be right. Sometimes the facts are difficult to ascertain, but so many of the lies spread via social media are easily disproved by consulting primary sources.
But the thing is, while facts are objectively true or false, a policy choice can't be objectively right. What you often see is, policy masquerading as facts.
"If you accept X then we need to do Y."
"I don't think we should do Y"
"Then you reject facts."
Something everyone seems to have forgotten is that intelligent, well-informed, people of good will can look at the same facts and come up with different policy prescriptions.
As I've gotten older, I've started to doubt the idea that there are any objective facts at all, or at least if there are, the human brain has a limited capacity to comprehend and communicate them.
(Edit) This doesn't mean I don't believe in truth, right/wrong etc... it means that I'm constantly balancing what's most likely to be trueish - subject to higher quality information at a later time.
A policy choice is the linkage of a fact to a particular goal; while few policy choices are so simple as to admit of a binary choice, you can certainly rank them on a gradient.
Of course, it helps if your goal is clearly definable and you maintain awareness of consistency. Otherwise, a goal of, say, improving life expectancy might be satisfied by a eugenics policy which made unpersons of those with medical conditions that would lower life expectancy.
But a goal cannot objectively be right or wrong. It could be agreed upon, but it can never be true in the sense that objective facts are true.
To go even further, people may agree on the 'what' of a goal, but disagree on the 'why' of a goal, which very much inform what policy choices they are amenable.
> but so many of the lies spread via social media are easily disproved by consulting primary sources.
I wish this were true. I used to post snopes links and primary sources to Baby Boomer posts on Facebook, but it's hopeless. They either don't trust the fact-check, can rationalize it away, or just don't care. One of the most shocking realizations of my adult life has been learning that a very large portion of my otherwise high-functioning friends will believe anything, no matter how crazy or self-contradictory, if it reinforces their sense of self-righteousness.
