With 30 percent of Americans still denying global warming exists, and at least some still denying Barack Obama is an American citizen, it is striking that basic facts can become so contested. David Roberts, for Vox, says America is in the midst of an epistemic crisis. One advanced, he argues, by Trumpism’s rejection of mainstream institutions devoted to gathering and disseminating knowledge.

In such an atmosphere, one wonders, even if Trump is found to be guilty of collusion with Russia whether, ultimately, those facts will matter. But this isn’t a new phenomenon. Americans have been engaged in dubious interpretation and disregard of facts for as long as schools have been teaching children that the pilgrims and the Indians were friendly co-collaborators and glossed over the raw horrors of the slave trade.