It's a new age of ideology. The current struggle is between competing and irreconcilable ideologies - worldviews - with "science," in the inductive fallacy sense, being only one of the weapons in the battle between the Sons of Darkness and the Sons of Light. All sides start with unquestioned ideas about how they believe the world should be and then use "science" and "fact" to bolster their side and bludgeon their enemies. The Internet becomes an echo chamber for these ideological tribes, endlessly repeating the self-replicating memes. If you repeat a falsehood enough, it becomes "truth" within the tribe and, perhaps more importantly, among those who have no interest in understanding the truth, but who determine elections. Issues are looked at based on a single fact, a single underlying shared value, which may or may not be relevant, and this becomes the litmus test for politicians. This is then bolstered with large amounts of money to reinforced one's own version of the truth and, more importantly, to discredit one's opponent's versions of truth and demonize the messenger. Behind every issue, after stripping away the rhetoric and the noise, there is this competition of ideologies, worldviews and values, with those who agree on the side of the angels and those who disagree the minions of the fallen angel. It's all ideology, all the time and this process only seems to be getting worse, with all light being sucked into the ideological black hole.