If fighting for good people against lies and innuendo cause us to lose then so be it and my explanation to the next generation will be easy! Some lines should never be crossed for any reason ever. Denying the truth in order to win is one of them.
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, is it still foolish?
Yes. Truth was never a popularity contest.
I have been the only person in the room who was right. After a couple of weeks, that was proven to all present, but for a time, it was a damned uncomfortable position. There was great pressure to 'go along' to 'get along' to give in to consensus. I would not, because I knew I was right. It took time to even get people to look at the data, to check the information, and after that, one by one, they let go of their emotional attachment to their positions and realized those positions were incorrect. Finally, the facts won.
Not all people (these were scientists and engineers, people uncommonly able to step back and look at evidence or the absence thereof), can de-link their emotions and selves from an idea well enough to consider it on the simple basis of what is. Which makes the idea of a jury trial scary enough, but especially means the court of public opinion is ever doomed to be populated by people who have been emotionally invested in a particular belief and who will not release that belief (and admit they were wrong), even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
It is the reason that AOCs "Green New Deal", "Gun Control", and so many other Liberal projects haven't been summarily dismissed as the garbage they are, and that such emotionally driven nonsense will continue to plague humanity and policy for the foreseeable future.