Facts are reality and truth and should be the basis for all our policy decisions. A fact is something that is known to exist. In the post-fact political world we now live in, facts are spun, criticized and taken as opinions or partisan beliefs.
People now only believe facts when they adhere to one of their already-held ideas. If a fact contradicts someone’s idea it is railed against as a lie, conspiracy or attempt to trick people. There is currently an ongoing crusade against experts, fact-checkers and knowledge itself. If this continues, we may end up destroying the very political system that our Founding Fathers worked so hard to build.
We now live in a world where alternate realities are made up from thin air and opinions are misconstrued as facts. Experts and fact-checkers are a necessary component to our society and deserve respect.
Disturbingly, many experts are thought of as arrogant men and women who sit in ivory towers disconnected from the real world. These perceptions are blatantly false. The work experts and fact-checkers do is grounded in reality and based on logic. We may not want to hear what an expert or fact-checker says, but what they are trying to do is find truth.
Experts are all around us. Experts are not just professors in universities who dedicate their lives to educating citizens and conducting research to find truths about the real world. Experts are the workers at our local auto shop who can fix our car when it breaks and doctors who heal us when we are sick or unwell. They are also engineers who build a better world for us, investment managers who help us make wise monetary decisions and farmers who excel at growing and cultivating the food we need to eat.
Experts are all around us and our society depends on specialists of many kinds to keep us alive and functioning within our communities. Whether we like it or not, we depend on experts who know more than we do about their professions.
As much as some politicians want us to believe that they can make up information whenever they want, that is not how knowledge works. Facts are not partisan nor are they opinions. Believing something does not make it true. Respected fact-checkers are non-partisan individuals or organizations who seek to hold politicians accountable for the lies they tell us to win our votes. They are an essential part of a democracy to keep politicians honest. Identities as a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or otherwise should not hold power over facts.
We can only trust someone’s information when it was acquired through logical reason by sifting and winnowing to find the truth. This is precisely what fact-checkers do. As citizens, we need to construct our realities on facts. Not opinions, beliefs or partisan ideologies. This is the only way to keep our country great.
If we ridicule and refuse to listen to fact-checkers and experts, then the fabric of our democracy is at risk of coming undone. The only sound and successful policy decisions that we make are the ones based on facts derived from reality. If we base our policy decisions on made-up information we tread in dangerous waters. Our Constitution was built on facts. The Founding Fathers were men from the Enlightenment era and created the United States of America on a basis of factual knowledge, reason and logic. The Founding Fathers were not perfect men, nor were they free from error. However, they strove for the truth, something our society has somehow forgotten how to do.
Thomas is a senior majoring in history and psychology. What are your views on the evolution of society’s views on facts? What steps do you think should be taken to reinstitute a focus on facts and confidence in experts? Please end all comments, questions and concerns to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
