C'mon people. We're trying to use facts to negotiate. In the USA post 2017, everybody is entitled to their own facts, but not their own opinions. So, it's en

C'mon people. We're trying to use facts to negotiate. In the USA post 2017, everybody is entitled to their own facts, but not their own opinions. So, it's entirely pointless to use facts (such as the fact that the internet is hard to censor even with Great Firewall of China scale infrastructure) in conversations with elected officials. Facts are in the eye of the beholder. Facts are just "smart" people yakking away spouting stuff that's contrary to established opinion. So, our facts are wrong. Get over it. We can't convince people whose livelihood depend on sticking to established opinion. How do you counter this kind of stuff? 1. Say yes. 2. Do whatever you were doing before. 3. If a jurisdiction imposes some kind of tax on some kind of product, just say that it's contrary to established opinion for businesses to collect new taxes for governments. 4. Do whatever you were doing before. I lived for a while in an open-town-meeting town in New England. Occasionally the townspeople would vote in two contradictory articles, giving contradictory instructions to the town manager or public works department. In those cases, the moderator often said, "It's possible the town manager won't be able to obey article 7 without violating article 8. Do you want to do anything about that before we adjourn tonight? Do I hear a motion to reconsider?" THAT's the way to deal with this stuff: let the legislative machinery deal with conflicts in established opinion.