It’s an enervating time to be alive. There are silver linings, such as his widow’s eulogy, but the death of Charlie Kirk spawned a grotesque debate about his past statements in relation to his death, as if being rude enough or wrong enough on certain merits earns the ultimate punishment. Too curious, I watched the video of his death, and it made me uncharacteristically reverent. So with apologies for using a man’s death as a starting point, I write to mourn another death, of fact-checking, by suicide.

Snopes has, for me, long been the best of the fact-checkers. That may make it the tallest midget, but I have routinely posted links to the site on social media as a quick way to quietly steer a friend or friends-of-a-friend away from implausible claims that are too easily repeated.

Fact-checking has always had its problems. It has poor foundational moorings, for one. As I said of the related concept of misinformation a few months ago, fact-checking has a certain condescension: “‘You’re getting the wrong information, and it’s causing some bad behaviors. We’re going to get you better information, pat you on the head, and tuck you in.’”

Fact-checking also centers facts as the ground on which civic debate plays out. The truth (pardon the word choice) is that facts are pretty easy and unimportant compared to values. We disagree about values far more, and far more deeply, when we fight. It is a misdirection to treat social distemper as a facts problem, and that makes the distemper harder to clear up.

But that is when fact-checking is at its best. Snopes has now come as close as it can to fact-checking a false claim as true, using equivocal, deceptive language as the tiniest of arguable fig leaves to mask its wrongdoing.

“Black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot.” I told you the debate was grotesque. The socials are alive with outrage about that quote, attributed to Charlie Kirk.

In its assessment, Snopes says,

After the fatal shooting of Turning Point USA founder and CEO Charlie Kirk, a conservative commentator and ally to U.S. President Donald Trump, a rumor spread that he had once said Black women like television presenter Joy Reid; former first lady Michelle Obama; former Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas; and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did “not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously.”

Snopes then shares an “example” of this assertion circulating on the internet, which quotes Kirk as saying, “Black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot.”

Earlier, I noted my own infelicitous use of the word “truth.” The word claims to something like empirical certainty when a more tentative word would be better. I work with words, so I know what I’m doing there.

Snopes and Snopes contributor Anna Rascouët-Paz also work with words. So they must know the difference between a rude charge aimed at four women of a given race and a categorical statement about all women of that race. The rumor is that Kirk made the categorical statement. Snopes prevaricates on whether it is fact-checking the quote about the category of “black women” or fact-checking the actual statement Kirk made about the four. Those are different things, and in this context you can’t honestly substitute one for the other. You can only do so dishonestly.

There is one other possibility. That is lacking the brain processing power to be taken seriously. Where the usual explanation is incompetence, this time I prefer to attribute it to malice.

There is a legitimate debate about affirmative action and its effects. Kirk was engaging one side of it, arguing strongly and in provocative terms that by selecting people for important positions based on their race, you are diminishing the role of substantive merits. I think that’s inarguable.

There are legitimate reasons to do that. There is not one perfect person for the role of TV presenter, first lady, member of Congress, or Supreme Court justice. Everyone who reaches a certain threshold of merit is good enough for such jobs, and you can consider other factors, such as the way they symbolize and, by symbolizing, promote social progress. In this case, they do so with respect to one of the most important wrongs in America’s history.

There are further arguments and counterarguments, but: There, that’s not so hard, is it? We have a question of values—a difficult one. The fact of what Kirk said is not difficult to discern, unless you’re looking to Snopes to clear things up. RIP.