Leonard Pitts' article in today's paper, When Facts Don't Matter, eloquently illuminates the deep course that unchallenged shadow material eventually dredges through a culture. Get the whole article in The Oregonian, or from The Miami Herald, its source. Here are a few excerpts:

"Not long ago, if you told a whopper like Palin's and it was as thoroughly debunked as hers was, that would have ended the discussion. These days, it is barely even part of the discussion. These days, facts seem overmatched by falsehood, too slow to catch them, too weak to stop them…

Indeed, falsehoods are harder to kill than a Hollywood zombie. Run them through with fact, and still they shamble forward, fueled by echo chamber media, ideological tribalism, cognitive dissonance, a certain imperviousness to shame, and an understanding that a lie repeated long enough, loudly enough, becomes, in the minds of those who need to believe it, truth…

It seems that not only are facts no longer important, but they are not even the point. Rather, the point is the construction and maintenance of an alternate narrative designed to enhance and exploit the receiver's fears, his or her sense of prerogatives, entitlement, propriety and morality under siege from outside forces…

This is the state of American political discourse… where a sense of dislocation, disaffection, and general been-done-wrongness has become sine qua non, coin of the realm, lingua franca of the true believers — and of their true belief in the desperate need to turn back the unrighteous Other and his unwelcome change…

The result of which is that Americans increasingly occupy two realities, one based on the conviction that facts matter, the other on the notion that facts are only what you need them to be in a given moment…"

Beautifully put. Frightfully true. Thank you, Leonard, for your clear eyes and eloquent voice.