PolitiFact took a look at Kamal Harris’s lies about Florida’s curriculum today, and . . . well, it did what all “factchecking” websites do when evaluating hotly contested political propositions: It made a series of editorial decisions that allowed it to arrive at the conclusion at which it wanted to arrive all along.

I am by no means the first person to observe that the idea of a neutral “fact-checking service” is a silly one within the political context, because one cannot remove from the equation the subjective judgments that lead to our political disagreements in the first instance. One can easily — and fairly — check to see whether a flat matter of fact is false or correct: how a tall a mountain is, which state is the most populous, how many airplanes British Airways has in service, etc. But the moment you start to evaluate politicized claims, you’re inevitably going to end up making political arguments. And, unlike political writers, who can be evaluated over time based on their consistency or integrity or admissions against interest, PolitiFact gets to start over each time.

My objection to Kamala Harris’s claim that the state of Florida has “decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery” is that, in context, it is deliberately misleading. Harris clearly wants people to believe that “enslaved people benefited from slavery” is the overall narrative thrust — or even the on-balance implication — of Florida’s course. And it’s clearly not. There are hundreds of items in the curriculum, which, as a whole, make it abundantly clear that slavery was evil. As I noted yesterday:

the program establishes “the harsh conditions and their consequences on British American plantations (e.g., undernourishment, climate conditions, infant and child mortality rates of the enslaved vs. the free)”; highlights “the harsh conditions in the Caribbean plantations (i.e., poor nutrition, rigorous labor, disease)”; notes the “overwhelming death rates” that were caused by the practice; records that there were many ways in which “Africans resisted slavery”; and reports that Florida, like the entire “South[,] tried to prevent slaves from escaping.” There is not a person in America who, when trying to convince children that a given practice was good, lists “harsh conditions,” “undernourishment,” “mortality,” “poor nutrition,” “disease,” or “overwhelming death rates” as its consequences. The idea is absurd.

Presumably, this is also obvious to PolitiFact. But it’s also inconvenient to the conclusion that PolitiFact wanted to reach. So it didn’t. Instead, it “ruled” that the single provision that Harris is misrepresenting (Harris didn’t actually “cite” it, as is claimed):

is not the only lesson Florida students would be taught under the standards that also include many other aspects of Black history and slavery. But the one Harris cited is included, and has drawn significant criticism.

The middle school standards approved by the Florida state education board say students should learn about “skills” learned by slaves that could be “applied for their personal benefit.” Several historians who have studied slavery cast doubt on this lesson’s educational value.

We rate this statement Mostly True.

This is hyper-literalism, followed by the cherrypicking of “experts” — both of which are choices that ought to be evaluated as such. When, as happens often, PolitiFact wishes to pronounce that a given claim that is clearly true is, in fact, untrue, it takes the opposite approach and finds mitigating context where there is none. Likewise, when it wishes to elevate experts who disagree with a given claim over those who do not, it does so. The whole thing is a game — and a game we’d be much better off without. “Fact” doesn’t enter into it. Like me, PolitiFact is making an argument — and an argument that ought to be evaluated like any other. As one might expect, my view is that PolitiFact is making a bad argument, that, by design, serves to allow the vice-president of the United States to flit wildly between a Motte and a Bailey, and thereby to indignantly tell the general public that Florida’s course teaches kids that slavery benefited the slaves, and then, when challenged, fall back onto the extremely narrow claim that one of the 191 references to the practice includes the word “benefit.” But, whether one agrees with that or not, it would be much better for everyone if PolitiFact, and those who pretend to perform the save service, were to drop “Fact” from their names and descriptions and come down into the arena with the rest of us.