But attributing political disagreement to a simple refusal to face facts or accept science misunderstands the interplay of facts and opinion in political persuasion. The idea that we should all agree on the facts, as a pre-political baseline, and then proceed to debate our opinions and convictions, is a technocratic conceit. Political debate is often about how to identify and characterize the facts relevant to the controversy in question. Whoever succeeds in framing the facts is already a long way to winning the argument. Moynihan to the contrary, our opinions direct our perceptions; they do
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