Letās go further with this line of thought.
Trump won the 2016: a generally agreed upon, non-political statement of fact. The foreign interference issue is related, but not the same. Itās about politics, but itās a basic fact.
Obama won in 2012. Also a simple statement of fact.
And so on for basically any election prior to 2020. Youāll get some pushback on Bush/Gore, but not even close to the extent of 2020 and still, the statement, āBush won the 2000 electionā would mostly be accepted as a statement of fact about politics rather than a political statement open to debate.
Biden won the 2020 election. For a substantial portion of our population, this is a controversial, debatable, political statement rather than a simple factual statement.
COVID killed 500,000+ Americans: another fact that is now politics.
A pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power (insurrection), killing a number of people in the process. Cops were beaten with flags and crushed in doors; the mob claimed to want to execute leaders of government and were searching the halls of the Capitol looking for them; the paused in ransacking the Senate chambers to pray āin Jesus name;ā they did all of this because the outgoing president repeatedly lied about the results of the election. This also somehow a debatable (hyperbolic) political statement rather than a simple recounting of facts.
And on and on. When everything is political, there is no longer agreed upon reality.
Growing up in conservative communities, I often heard about the dangers of post-modernism and moral relativism; how āmy truthā is replacing objective facts with opinion. Even in recent years, weāve heard that āfacts donāt care about your feelings.ā
And yet the very same voices that decried the downfall of objective truth are tearing or limb from limb.
Thereās room for debate on taxes or abortion or immigration or whatever. Thereās no room for debate on basic reality. Anyone who disagrees with me on taxes or abortion just disagrees, no big deal; the real problem is anyone that wonāt engage in reality.
Cry all you want about trans athletes suddenly dominating womenās sports or whatever latest fear Iām supposed to have, but anti-reality and right wing have become synonymous.