Conor Friedersdorf, reacting to the Thatcher news from last week:
I’d say that every democratic people must navigate a strait that passes between twin dangerson one side, credulity and leader-worship that blinds it to the machinations of duplicitous elected officials; and on the other side, paranoid lies whose unchecked spread threatens a polity’s health and sanity. The safest way to navigate that strait is to skeptically investigate conspiracy theories, and to dismiss them on two most devastating grounds of refutation: a dearth of evidence that they are true, and a preponderance of evidence that they are false.