Debunking is an important democratic task, but in a late modern context where there is very little agreement as to what constitutes facts or truth or how to arrive at them consensually, these strategies will never fully gain traction with those operating in a different epistemic register. In fact, such beliefs are mostly impervious to counterevidence, fact-checking, or empirically grounded logic because the fabrication and propagation of these ideas and beliefs are finally exercises in meaning-making in a world that lacks stability or coherence or the means of rendering the world meaningful. However flawed or irrational, these ideas function to make sense of the world, and they work because they resonate with the life circumstances and experiences of the people who hold them
James Davison Hunter, Democracy and Solidarity, 309.