The Marketplace of Ideas has Fallen. What's left?

With each new administration come changes in national philosophy. President Trump wasted no time ordering federal agencies to remove web pages referencing the climate crisis. Before that, he signed an order proclaiming that the United States will recognize only two sexes: male and female. These acts, and others like them, are more than executive orders. They are assertions about reality.

The president’s statements are, of course, total horseshit. Set aside gender; estimates vary on intersex prevalence, but even the lowest estimates hover around 0.01%. That’s tens of thousands of non-binary-sexed people in the US alone. As for the climate, denial is getting embarrassing. It is the overwhelming scientific consensus that warming—due to the burning of fossil fuels—is not only real but accelerating. Global warming has caused and will continue to cause worse and more frequent “extreme weather events” (read: natural disasters), including but not limited to hurricanes, droughts, and wildfires. Skeptics can cry and yell all they want. There is no misinformation that can save them from what is coming.

It is fashionable to say that we live in a “post-truth” society. Social media has facilitated the spread of “alternative facts” (thank you to Kellyanne Conway for that turn of phrase) better known as falsehoods. Conservative idealogues have squealed for First Amendment protections on private platforms like Facebook and X. Their illogic and often flatly wrong claims must be defeated, they argue, in the mythical “marketplace of ideas”—without interference from moderating teams. By and large, they have won this battle, spreading their incoherent dogma like a virus. As evidence of their victory, you have only to look at the 2024 election. According to an Ipsos poll from October, preference for Trump correlated with believing false information about immigration, crime, and the economy. But the facts remain what they are. And when the marketplace of ideas becomes polluted, it is time to regroup within the Empire of Truth.

The Empire of Truth is not as fickle as the marketplace of ideas. While the United States is still nominally a democracy, the objective reality we share is not. Within the Empire of Truth, something either is, or it isn’t.

For example, vaccines do not cause autism in the Empire of Truth, because vaccines do not cause autism anywhere, under any circumstances, and never have. You are not guaranteed safety within the Empire of Truth—parents who do not vaccinate their children endanger your kids’ lives as well as theirs—but you are safer inside than out.

The reasons to retrench our information environment are many in number. Things will get worse, and quickly. When they do, people who are able to distinguish fact from fiction will do better than those who can’t. (Here I make the bold claim that it is better to make decisions based on Truth.) When Trump said tariffs would not raise prices for Americans, millions believed him. Some people will be more prepared for economic catastrophe than others.

While I direct most of my censure towards Republicans, uniquely eager as they are to be the party of Lies, it must be said that Truth is apolitical. For example, when LA mayor Karen Bass vowed to rebuild homes “as they were”—she was not operating within the demesne of the Empire. The Truth is that the wildfires’ destruction was a function of both climate change and homes built “as they were.” If you were to take Mayor Bass’s advice, the Empire would be unfeeling when your house burned a second time. If we are to be the party of Truth, then we must cleave to it as we rebuild our movement.

Sometimes it takes a little elbow grease to do so. Desperate for good news, I have been forwarded positive stories by friends and family-members with no corroborating sources. Defending the Empire begins at home. Let us hold each other accountable. Look things up. Look them up again, someplace else. Keep track of which sources you trust, and which you do not. Hold fast to reality. Even when it hurts.

It is ironic that Ben Shapiro made famous the phrase, "Facts don't care about your feelings." He’s right of course, but the conservative project is about as far away from the facts as is epistemologically possible. Though they cloak their agenda in the veil of “common sense,” the Republican platform is founded on the rejection of empirical evidence. It is a fact that immigration has boosted our economy. It is a fact that anti-abortion laws have been found to increase infant deaths. It is a fact that in 2024 crime rates fell across America. It is a fact that under Biden, the U.S. produced more oil than ever before. And yet many conservatives quote Orwell: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”

There is a well-known set of tactics employed by abusers called DARVO; this stands for deny, attack, and reverse the positions of victim and offender. Republican politicians have made ample use of this tactic in their war on truth and science. They deny their own failures and instead blame anyone else (DEI, Biden, or—why not?—Obama!) but denial does not exculpate them. The power of DARVO is that it can be deployed against any criticism—even this one. It transforms political dialectic into an ouroboros of accusation, with no beginning and no end. It is therefore tempting to report such “reversed” positions with equal weight, to imply the opposing perspective is valid. But it is not. Truth exists. It simply does. Its primacy is unassailable. One perspective is correct. The other perspective is wrong.

Republicans will protest that however misinformed, their perspectives are valid. But the American project is not a therapy session. When the marketplace of ideas fails us, we must fortify within the Empire of Truth.