Perhaps the most frustrating question about Donald Trump's political success is why people keep voting for him even though his statements often don't withstand the most basic fact-checking. And it's not just Trump: The Austrian presidential candidate Norbert Hofer appears to be successful in convincing voters that he's a moderate, conciliatory candidate though the press has written extensively about his history of extreme nationalist statements and leanings.
Why are people so unwilling to accept factual rebuttals? Is it that, as Farhad Manjoo wrote in "True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society," "the creeping partisanship has begun to distort our very perceptions about what is 'real' and what isn't"?
Writing in The Washington Post, Anne Applebaum blamed the social media for making it "easier for politicians, partisans, computerized 'bots' and foreign governments to manipulate news." Fact-checking websites, such as Politifact.com in the U.S. or Stopfake.org in Ukraine, Applebaum wrote, are "one of the best solutions," but "they work only for people who want them to work, and that number may be shrinking."