[zxcmx]

Truth itself is not really knowable in many interesting cases, and even scientific truths which might appear "objective" at any given point are subject to debate, change and revision.

The thing that needs to be protected is the pursuit of truth and I think this looks a lot like freedom of the press and freedom of civic speech.

[kypro]

This is an important point. There are very few "objective" truths in politics, politics is mainly just people arguing over their personal preferences.

The problem is those who hold power like to label other preferences as wrong and often try to suppress them.

I'm not sure truth is protectable in most political contexts. What does truth mean when we're dealing with conversions involving subjective preferences?

[atoav]

I think you are right in truth itself is not really knowable in many interesting cases — but I think we already would be okay with a level lower: what if we manage to get rid of verifiable untruths?

You know the "X says Y is true and Y can be objectively checked because there is a definition for what Y is". I think that the US had a corrosive atmosphere even before Trump already, think about the whole "candidate X is socialist/fascist". Not to take a political stance, but there are definitions for those terms and checking if something is untrue is just a matter if the reality of what candidate X says or does fits that definition.

This is what media was supposed to do and this is what public discourse was meant to be before parties became tribes, before the footballification of politics.

Media has no incentive to do this nowadays, as they have to fight about your brain time with much nicer and more exciting media products.

[zxcmx]

I agree that "lies" and "bullshit" seem to be among the defining problems of our time.

What seems to have broken down is trust.

In the many cases where you rightly point out the truth is discoverable, who do we trust to tell it to us?

It's a hard, long-term problem. If people have lost faith in priests, scientists, politicians and the media, where to go from there?

Any program to restore some ground truth to common discourse will have to operate by building (or rebuilding) broad societal trust in one or more public institutions. Ideally institutions which act in good faith and are in fact trustworthy.

It is very hard (in a democracy) to make true progress on societal issues without some way to achieve broad consensus that they are real.